Transcript: Episode 0030

“Against the Clockwork Universe”

This transcript:
  1. Was machine generated.
  2. Has not been checked for errors.
  3. May not be entirely accurate.
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00:00:00 – 00:00:03:	Let's go!

00:00:33 – 00:00:41:	Welcome to the Stone Choir podcast. I am Corey J. Mahler.

00:00:41 – 00:00:43:	And I'm woe.

00:00:43 – 00:00:49:	On today's episode of Stone Choir, we're going to be discussing deism, the belief that

00:00:49 – 00:00:54:	what's called commonly the watchmaker theory, that there is a God, there's a creator. But

00:00:54 – 00:01:00:	once he set things in motion, he basically just stepped back and let things run. The

00:01:00 – 00:01:05:	reason we're discussing that today is that I think that Christianity has been overtaken

00:01:05 – 00:01:10:	by a soft form of deism. Maybe some of you even listening have some elements of this

00:01:10 – 00:01:17:	deistic view in your own hearts. Even while you confess the true God, deism is a non-trinitarian

00:01:17 – 00:01:25:	heresy and an anti-divinity heresy in some ways. But the aspect of it that is compatible

00:01:25 – 00:01:30:	with modern Christianity, which is to say not Christianity at all, is the belief that

00:01:30 – 00:01:35:	God set things in motion and he just kind of vanished. So the first half of the episode

00:01:35 – 00:01:39:	is going to be talking about that. And then the second half, we're going to be illustrating

00:01:39 – 00:01:46:	some examples of how the scripture talks about sin, specifically having temporal consequences,

00:01:46 – 00:01:51:	and how we fundamentally don't believe that today, even as we say that we do. And just

00:01:52 – 00:01:56:	as an alert to any Roman Catholic listeners, I know there are a few of you at least, when

00:01:56 – 00:01:59:	we're talking in that, we're going to be using completely different terminology than

00:01:59 – 00:02:04:	you use in your own confessions. So please don't mistake us for being in agreement. We're

00:02:04 – 00:02:08:	actually in complete disagreement. This is one of the reasons why we split from Rome.

00:02:08 – 00:02:13:	It was one of the principal reasons for the Reformation. So we're going to be using some

00:02:13 – 00:02:17:	of the same terms you use that mean completely different things. So this is going to be a

00:02:17 – 00:02:22:	polemic episode, but just know upfront, when we're saying some of those words, we are not

00:02:22 – 00:02:28:	talking about what you believe. A specific warning to parents before we get into this,

00:02:28 – 00:02:33:	towards the end, we're going to be giving an example that is necessarily graphic and a sexual

00:02:33 – 00:02:38:	nature. We're going to be using one or two words that you may not want to explain to your

00:02:38 – 00:02:44:	children today. So I'd caution you to maybe screen this episode before you listen with family,

00:02:44 – 00:02:48:	as we know many of you are now, and we're thankful for that. Whether or not your kids listen to

00:02:48 – 00:02:54:	this episode now or later, the reason that we're going to create some trouble for you as a parent

00:02:54 – 00:03:02:	is specifically that the example is such a crucial example of how Christianity in sort of the modern

00:03:02 – 00:03:08:	form of Jesus died for us, and so everything's okay, is fundamentally destructive to how we are

00:03:08 – 00:03:12:	living our lives. So we're going to make the case for that. And that specific example is one,

00:03:12 – 00:03:17:	the whether or not your kids listen with you today, your kids need to know before they go and

00:03:17 – 00:03:24:	get married, they need to understand how certain sins should affect may selection, because they

00:03:24 – 00:03:28:	will affect the rest of their lives. They've affected your lives, they've affected everyone's

00:03:28 – 00:03:37:	lives in varying ways. So again, I'm going to give a brief recap of Scripture as it relates to God

00:03:37 – 00:03:43:	acting in time, and I'm going to cover just a few highlights of God doing stuff in time.

00:03:45 – 00:03:49:	The reason for highlighting these is that I think that as Christians today, even faithful

00:03:49 – 00:03:56:	Christians, we kind of look at God's action in creation as basically limited to what God said

00:03:56 – 00:04:01:	he did in Scripture, and then we have this hiatus, and then at some point he's going to come back.

00:04:02 – 00:04:08:	And so that's why I say we're kind of functionally deists, we'll make that case. But it's not that

00:04:08 – 00:04:13:	we're saying God never did anything after six days of creation, but we kind of believe that

00:04:13 – 00:04:19:	Jesus ascended into heaven, and then God's just kind of hands off, and later on God will come

00:04:19 – 00:04:23:	back and do more stuff. But in the meantime, we're kind of on our own. And that's false,

00:04:23 – 00:04:29:	that's plainly contradictory to Scripture. And again, it affects how we confess our faith,

00:04:29 – 00:04:36:	and how we live our lives. So in the beginning, the Word was with God, and the Word was God,

00:04:36 – 00:04:42:	and God said, Let there be light. And by the end of the sixth day of creation, God had finished

00:04:43 – 00:04:46:	all of the things that he intended to make, and he saw that it was very good.

00:04:48 – 00:04:54:	God walked with Adam face to face as friends, even as creature and creator, there was no

00:04:54 – 00:05:01:	adversarial nature there as there is today. Adam sinned. When he sinned, God cursed him,

00:05:01 – 00:05:06:	expelled him from the garden, declared that you will die. And God blessed him and said,

00:05:07 – 00:05:14:	through your lineage, I will solve this problem. I will undo the damage that you have done to all

00:05:14 – 00:05:22:	of creation in the fall. For about 1500 years, mankind became more and more wicked from the

00:05:22 – 00:05:27:	days of the garden, until in the days of Noah, that generation was so evil that God regretted

00:05:27 – 00:05:33:	he ever made man to begin with. And only for the sake of keeping the promise he had made to Adam,

00:05:33 – 00:05:39:	did he not kill all of mankind. So he preserved eight souls along with all the animals that needed

00:05:39 – 00:05:44:	to hitch a ride on the ark through the flood. Everything else in creation on this planet was

00:05:44 – 00:05:54:	destroyed. 500 years after that, God came to Abram and made Abram a new promise. 2000 years

00:05:54 – 00:05:59:	after God promised Adam that there would be something in the future through his lineage that

00:05:59 – 00:06:05:	would undo this damage, God specifically promised Abram that it would be through his descendants

00:06:05 – 00:06:12:	that that promise would be fulfilled. And for the next 2000 years, God worked directly in

00:06:12 – 00:06:21:	the lives of Abraham's ancestors to preserve those promises, those prophecies, and to preserve

00:06:21 – 00:06:29:	that lineage, to preserve the bloodline passed from Adam through Noah to Abraham and his sons

00:06:29 – 00:06:36:	in fulfillment of God's promise. 2000 years after the promise to Abraham, 4000 years after the promise

00:06:36 – 00:06:43:	to Adam, Jesus was born the Christ, the Messiah. He came in the flesh. He lived for 30 years as a

00:06:43 – 00:06:50:	normal man. 30th year of his life, he began his ministry. And for three years, he publicly taught,

00:06:50 – 00:06:57:	he performed miracles, he fulfilled the law of God, he fulfilled the perfect life that Adam

00:06:57 – 00:07:04:	failed to lead. And he also fulfilled through his ministry and his miracles every single promise,

00:07:04 – 00:07:12:	every single prophecy of the Messiah that was made in the Old Testament. On the cross, when Jesus

00:07:12 – 00:07:18:	died and he said it was finished, 4000 years after God said that creation was finished, Jesus said

00:07:18 – 00:07:24:	that his perfect redemption, perfect redeeming work of redemption was completed in his death on the

00:07:24 – 00:07:30:	cross. He rose three days later from the dead. For 40 days, he appeared and ministered to hundreds

00:07:30 – 00:07:37:	of people. He was witnessed widely as being alive after having been provably visibly dead,

00:07:37 – 00:07:43:	murdered, and dead in the ground for three days. After 40 days, he ascended into heaven. And that's

00:07:43 – 00:07:49:	kind of where a lot of the direct action of God disappears. Now, interestingly, the timing of this

00:07:49 – 00:07:55:	episode is that in the church calendar, in the Western calendar, ascension was last week. And

00:07:55 – 00:08:02:	this coming Sunday is the first Sunday of Pentecost. So in that 10 days between Christ's ascension

00:08:02 – 00:08:11:	and the Sunday, 50 days after Easter, when those tongues of fire come upon the disciples and the

00:08:11 – 00:08:17:	gathered people on the Sunday of Pentecost, that is a very visible miracle of God performing

00:08:17 – 00:08:24:	in the world. And subsequent to that, I think almost all the miracles that were performed

00:08:24 – 00:08:30:	specifically by the apostles and by believers in fulfillment, again, of those prophecies that

00:08:30 – 00:08:36:	had been made in the Old Testament, once the apostles had died, once they had spread knowledge

00:08:36 – 00:08:42:	of God, once they had revealed what had been taught to them during their three years of seminary,

00:08:42 – 00:08:46:	listening at Christ's feet every day, and the direct revelations that they were receiving from

00:08:46 – 00:08:53:	God, we don't have any warrant to believe that there's been subsequent direct revelation from

00:08:53 – 00:08:59:	God since the last apostles that has died. Most Christians consider that direct revelation from

00:08:59 – 00:09:06:	God of new things has ended. And unfortunately, I think that has caused us to believe that God

00:09:06 – 00:09:11:	vanished. You know, God stopped directly acting. And although he made subsequent promises in the

00:09:11 – 00:09:15:	New Testament as well as the Old to us, we don't believe them in quite the same fashion that it

00:09:15 – 00:09:21:	was believed leading up to that point. And so we're going to begin by talking about the advent of

00:09:21 – 00:09:28:	Deism, subsequent to Christ's death and resurrection and ascension, fast forward about another 1500

00:09:28 – 00:09:35:	years in our timeline. The Renaissance began and it led into the Enlightenment. And so today,

00:09:35 – 00:09:41:	2000 years after Christ's ascension, we haven't really seen much activity from God, not in the

00:09:41 – 00:09:45:	same way that it was seen in the past. And we ignore a lot of the things that God said about how he

00:09:45 – 00:09:51:	would be active in the world. And I think that that has caused tremendous problems for us in

00:09:51 – 00:09:56:	our lives as Christians, because by forgetting all the promises that God made about being specifically

00:09:56 – 00:10:06:	active in our lives, we forget his nature as our Creator and as our Redeemer, the God who promised

00:10:06 – 00:10:12:	all of those good things and sacrificed himself on the cross, also promised the small stuff,

00:10:12 – 00:10:18:	give us this day our daily bread. That is a prayer for God to remember his promise to us.

00:10:18 – 00:10:23:	And why I think many of us say grace before meals and try to be cognizant of the fact that

00:10:23 – 00:10:29:	food theoretically comes from God. I don't think we necessarily have the sort of immediate

00:10:29 – 00:10:35:	understanding that what you are eating is direct providence from the Almighty. That's something

00:10:35 – 00:10:41:	that in past generations, we did have because we didn't have grocery stores. You had food,

00:10:41 – 00:10:46:	in many cases, food you grew yourselves. If you had a crop failure, you could potentially face

00:10:46 – 00:10:51:	starvation. Today, we're insulated from crop failures. It doesn't matter how bad the weather is,

00:10:51 – 00:10:58:	how bad the crops are. You can always go to the store and find food. So post-enlightenment,

00:10:58 – 00:11:05:	post-industrial revolution, the world we live in today has pushed God out of the way and let us

00:11:05 – 00:11:09:	live in a world where we can believe that God's not really around. He's not doing much. We should

00:11:09 – 00:11:14:	obey him, but it's all just kind of theoretical that God's not doing stuff today. So we're going

00:11:14 – 00:11:19:	to begin specifically by talking about the advent of deism and the influence that it has had on

00:11:19 – 00:11:25:	the Christian faith. So as is becoming a theme with this podcast, we are going to mention the

00:11:25 – 00:11:33:	Enlightenment because really, deism entered Western civilization, Western society, and

00:11:34 – 00:11:39:	in time, the Christian Church in the West during the Enlightenment. And there are a number of

00:11:39 – 00:11:46:	individuals we could discuss when it comes to Enlightenment deism, but one of the main

00:11:46 – 00:11:51:	individuals would of course be David Hume. Now, before getting to Hume specifically,

00:11:52 – 00:12:00:	what deism is in this historical context is essentially a rejection of special revelation,

00:12:00 – 00:12:04:	not general revelation, but special revelation, a rejection of miracles,

00:12:05 – 00:12:12:	and a rejection of mystery. Because in essence, what deism wants to do is be able to explain the

00:12:12 – 00:12:21:	world purely via observation, empirical observation, and so subject the world to human reason, human

00:12:21 – 00:12:30:	logic. And so there was a removal, literally in some cases, of the miracles and the mystery

00:12:30 – 00:12:36:	from Christianity, from the Bible. For instance, Jefferson is one of the best examples of this.

00:12:37 – 00:12:43:	He literally took a razor and glue and cut out parts of the Bible and moved things around

00:12:43 – 00:12:49:	because he did not like the miracles. He did not like the parts that could not be reduced to human

00:12:49 – 00:12:55:	reason. And so there goes the mysteries as well, which would be the sacraments. Because of course,

00:12:55 – 00:13:01:	you're not going to explain communion or baptism without mystery, at least if you're

00:13:01 – 00:13:07:	being true to Scripture. To expand on what exactly I mean for those who aren't familiar with the

00:13:07 – 00:13:12:	terms by special revelation versus general revelation, essentially it's the distinction

00:13:12 – 00:13:18:	between the natural world being general revelation and Scripture being special revelation.

00:13:19 – 00:13:25:	And that is, Scripture in so far as the things revealed in Scripture are not revealed in the

00:13:25 – 00:13:32:	general revelation in creation. And so, for instance, deus will affirm that there is a God.

00:13:34 – 00:13:39:	One would hope that is obvious by the name deus coming from Latin deus God. But they will affirm

00:13:39 – 00:13:45:	that there is a higher being, there is a Creator God, there is a God who is in control.

00:13:46 – 00:13:54:	They deny that he acts in time in his creation. It's the watchmaker idea that God wound up the

00:13:54 – 00:14:00:	universe after creating the universe, obviously, and then let it go. And he stands back and he

00:14:00 – 00:14:07:	watches it. And so he is transcendent and not imminent. That is imminent with an A, not an I.

00:14:08 – 00:14:11:	But special revelation is what you have in Scripture.

00:14:12 – 00:14:21:	Special revelation is those things that are not revealed in the creation itself.

00:14:21 – 00:14:27:	And so, for instance, the core of the Christian faith, not revealed in the general revelation.

00:14:28 – 00:14:32:	Yes, you can discern there is a God. Yes, you can discern some things about God.

00:14:33 – 00:14:39:	But you cannot discern what God's disposition towards you is and how he wants you to interact

00:14:39 – 00:14:46:	with him. Yes, you can reasonably come to the conclusion that you should worship God and that

00:14:46 – 00:14:54:	is correct. Insofar as pagans came to that conclusion, they were right. But without Scripture,

00:14:54 – 00:14:59:	you cannot know about Christ. You cannot know about original sin, except insofar as you look

00:14:59 – 00:15:03:	around and see that things are not as they should be. But you don't know what to do with that.

00:15:04 – 00:15:09:	And so you need that special revelation to know that Christ died for you and that belief

00:15:09 – 00:15:15:	in Christ is how you have a right relationship with God. That is special revelation. You cannot

00:15:15 – 00:15:21:	get that from simply looking at nature. And just to throw in a verse here, just so that

00:15:21 – 00:15:24:	we're establishing that we're not just making this stuff up and we're not

00:15:25 – 00:15:31:	trying to sell some sort of weird pagan version of Christianity, the very beginning of Romans,

00:15:31 – 00:15:37:	Romans 1, God writes, For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness

00:15:37 – 00:15:42:	and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known

00:15:42 – 00:15:48:	about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes,

00:15:48 – 00:15:54:	namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the

00:15:54 – 00:15:59:	creation of the world in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although

00:15:59 – 00:16:04:	they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in

00:16:04 – 00:16:12:	their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened. So when we talk about natural revelation,

00:16:12 – 00:16:17:	general revelation, revealing God, we're not saying you don't need Jesus and you don't need

00:16:17 – 00:16:25:	scripture. We're pointing to scripture to say what God said about himself. God says that the heavens

00:16:25 – 00:16:32:	testified his glory. We mentioned on numerous episodes, go read Job 38 and following. Read it

00:16:32 – 00:16:38:	devotionally every week. That is God delivering an extended soliloquy about how creation itself

00:16:38 – 00:16:44:	testifies to his glory to every man, not only to Christians, but to every man who has ever lived.

00:16:44 – 00:16:47:	So Romans 1, the very beginning of the most important books in all scripture,

00:16:48 – 00:16:53:	says exactly what we're saying here. And we have a lot of critics who just flat out lie about

00:16:53 – 00:16:58:	everything we say. We are not making this stuff up. It's not a good idea that we had. God literally

00:16:58 – 00:17:06:	says this. So when we are battling deism, we're battling in our own church for precisely this

00:17:06 – 00:17:12:	reason. There are men who believe that natural revelation doesn't say anything about God. Now

00:17:12 – 00:17:17:	they're flipping it. They're saying that scripture is the only way to know anything and nature tells

00:17:17 – 00:17:23:	you nothing. God says both. God says that scripture reveals himself and the nature reveals himself

00:17:23 – 00:17:28:	in different ways and for different purposes. But to neglect one for the sake of the other

00:17:28 – 00:17:34:	is evil, as Christians, we don't get to do that. And it's also just ridiculous when they try to

00:17:34 – 00:17:40:	argue that scripture alone reveals God's glory, because usually when God in scripture appeals

00:17:40 – 00:17:47:	to his own glory, he appeals to creation. So scripture itself is directing us to creation to

00:17:47 – 00:17:53:	see the glory of God. And of course you paraphrase there the beginning of Psalm 19. I'll read the

00:17:53 – 00:17:59:	first six verses because they're highly relevant here. The heavens declare the glory of God,

00:17:59 – 00:18:05:	and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech and night to night

00:18:05 – 00:18:10:	reveals knowledge. There is no speech nor are there words whose voice is not heard.

00:18:11 – 00:18:15:	Their voice goes out through all the earth and their words to the end of the world.

00:18:16 – 00:18:21:	In them he is set a tent for the sun, which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber,

00:18:21 – 00:18:27:	and like a strongman runs its course with joy. Its rising is from the end of the heavens,

00:18:27 – 00:18:31:	and its circuit to the end of them, and there is nothing hidden from its heat.

00:18:32 – 00:18:37:	And of course that is speaking about creation, it's speaking about what God has done,

00:18:37 – 00:18:43:	what you can see when you look out the window. And so again, general revelation, creation,

00:18:43 – 00:18:51:	special revelation, Scripture, both are true, both reveal truths about God, and Christians can refer

00:18:51 – 00:19:02:	to both. But then to move on to David Hume as mentioned, he is one of the ones who created

00:19:02 – 00:19:09:	the modern conception, or really the modern framework of thought that turns into modern deism.

00:19:09 – 00:19:15:	Because in his essay, one of his more famous essays of miracles in one of his books,

00:19:16 – 00:19:22:	he basically argues that miracles are impossible. The problem is, if you actually look at the essay

00:19:22 – 00:19:28:	and assess the logic used in it, the entire thing is begging the question in the technical sense.

00:19:30 – 00:19:34:	When someone says begging the question in everyday speech, most likely he is wrong.

00:19:35 – 00:19:42:	Because begging the question is a technical term, it is a term of art. If something brings up a

00:19:42 – 00:19:50:	question, it is raising the question. If something begs the question, what it is doing is, in the

00:19:50 – 00:19:58:	question, in the inquiry itself, you are assuming the conclusion. And that is what Hume does. Because

00:19:58 – 00:20:04:	the basic outline of Hume's argument is that a miracle is something, this is how he defines

00:20:04 – 00:20:12:	miracles, a miracle is something that transgresses the natural law. It is something that is outside

00:20:12 – 00:20:16:	of a natural law that goes against it. And so the most common example that's going to be given is

00:20:16 – 00:20:22:	a man coming back from the dead, because of course the goal of denying miracles is to deny the

00:20:22 – 00:20:31:	resurrection, both Christ's resurrection and ultimately our resurrection. And so what he argues

00:20:31 – 00:20:41:	is miracles cannot exist because natural laws are established over time due to the empirical

00:20:41 – 00:20:50:	observation of many men. This is the argument that an empirical truth, if you have contending

00:20:50 – 00:20:55:	arguments, the one that is true is the one that has the greater weight of evidence behind it.

00:20:56 – 00:21:01:	Now there are a number of problems with this, some of you will undoubtedly be able to see them.

00:21:01 – 00:21:06:	For instance, if you have a long established error, how do you overturn that with accurate

00:21:06 – 00:21:12:	observations? Because every accurate observation is going to be, by Hume's own rule, thrown out

00:21:12 – 00:21:18:	because it doesn't accord with this supposedly established natural law. And so as you can see,

00:21:18 – 00:21:23:	he's begging the question. He's saying a miracle can't happen because a miracle is outside the

00:21:23 – 00:21:28:	natural law and only things that are inside the natural law can happen. And so it's just complete

00:21:28 – 00:21:35:	gibberish. That's literally the definition of a miracle. Exactly, that's the problem. He throws

00:21:35 – 00:21:39:	out the idea of a miracle by saying a miracle can't happen because a miracle is contrary to

00:21:39 – 00:21:46:	natural law. Natural law here being the laws of nature, not capital N, capital L, natural law

00:21:46 – 00:21:54:	flowing from God. But that's the core of this, and this is bled over into first the academy

00:21:54 – 00:22:01:	because of the sciences, particularly the hard sciences that then infected the liberal arts,

00:22:01 – 00:22:07:	and then from there, because of course theology is a liberal art. Theology used to be called the

00:22:07 – 00:22:14:	queen of the liberal arts in proper academia in centuries past. From there it bled over into the

00:22:14 – 00:22:22:	church. And so you have Christians who basically affirm this sort of thought pattern without

00:22:22 – 00:22:29:	really thinking about what it is they're affirming. And so you have a denial of God's

00:22:30 – 00:22:36:	active involvement in the world. You have this conception of God as being, as was mentioned

00:22:36 – 00:22:42:	earlier, transcendent and not imminent, which is to say above it all, sitting back watching,

00:22:42 – 00:22:48:	he's off in heaven somewhere. This is an error that some make when they contend that Christ

00:22:48 – 00:22:53:	is at the right hand of God. Not that Christ being at the right hand of God is an error,

00:22:55 – 00:23:01:	but the conception of what the right hand of God is can be an error. God is not a body.

00:23:02 – 00:23:10:	God is spirit. God is not contained in some heaven that is a physical location. The right hand of God

00:23:10 – 00:23:16:	is a position of power and authority. And so Christ isn't contained according to divinity or

00:23:16 – 00:23:24:	humanity in some physical location somewhere. He is omnipresent because of course the fullness

00:23:24 – 00:23:30:	of deity dwells bodily in Christ. Therefore he has the fullness of the attributes of deity,

00:23:30 – 00:23:35:	one of course being omnipresence, sort of a tangent, but it's important here,

00:23:36 – 00:23:42:	because if you deny that God is imminent by saying that he is only transcendent,

00:23:43 – 00:23:48:	then you are denying his involvement in the creation and really you're at least verging

00:23:48 – 00:23:56:	on denying the very nature of God because you're denying omnipresence. And so what we need to do

00:23:56 – 00:24:02:	is have more of the mindset that our ancestors, our forebears in the faith would have had where

00:24:02 – 00:24:07:	they looked at the natural world with wonder because they looked at it as God being actively

00:24:07 – 00:24:14:	involved. God is the one who causes the sun to rise and the sun to set. God is the one who causes

00:24:14 – 00:24:20:	the change of the seasons. God is the one who causes every seed to germinate in your field or not.

00:24:21 – 00:24:27:	Everything we have comes from God. He is involved in everything from the grandest scale,

00:24:28 – 00:24:35:	the movement of galaxies in the universe, the interaction of the galaxies, this grand awesome

00:24:35 – 00:24:43:	scale all the way down to the smallest interactions of whether it's individual atoms or particles

00:24:43 – 00:24:50:	inside of one. God controls all of that. He is involved. He upholds everything by his power.

00:24:51 – 00:25:01:	Without God's active, imminent involvement, nothing happens. And that includes miracles. Now,

00:25:01 – 00:25:08:	Hume's definition of what a miracle is isn't entirely wrong because when we speak of a miracle,

00:25:09 – 00:25:16:	what we really mean is that God involved himself in a particular way that is so out of the ordinary

00:25:16 – 00:25:23:	that it is utterly undeniable. So God is involved, as I said, in everything. So the cell divisions

00:25:23 – 00:25:29:	in your body right now, God controls those, those happen because he wills it. But we don't call

00:25:29 – 00:25:34:	that a miracle. It is a miracle in the broader sense of the term, but we don't call it a miracle

00:25:34 – 00:25:41:	because it is in perfect accord with the way God made things to operate. What we would call a miracle

00:25:41 – 00:25:46:	is a man coming back from the dead because that is not in accord with how the fallen world works.

00:25:47 – 00:25:53:	God has to intervene in a special sort of way to cause a man to come back from the dead.

00:25:53 – 00:25:59:	And so that's what we mean really when we say miracle. And that's what these individuals,

00:26:01 – 00:26:07:	born of the Enlightenment thought, deny. They rip them literally out of the Bible in some cases

00:26:07 – 00:26:13:	and say you can't possibly have a miracle because God isn't actually involved in creation. He is

00:26:13 – 00:26:18:	merely sitting back and watching the machine that he spun up and then let loose. And I think at some

00:26:18 – 00:26:24:	point what has really happened is that while they were trying to deny miracles outright,

00:26:24 – 00:26:30:	you know, special things like resurrection of the dead, as you laid out, they ultimately

00:26:30 – 00:26:35:	are fundamentally denying that God is doing the things that God says that he does in scripture.

00:26:36 – 00:26:42:	In Jeremiah 10, it's written, it is he who made the earth by his power, who established the world

00:26:42 – 00:26:47:	by his wisdom, and by his understanding stretched out the heavens. When he utters his voice, there

00:26:47 – 00:26:52:	is a tumult of waters in the heaven, and he makes the mist rise from the ends of the earth.

00:26:52 – 00:26:56:	He makes lightning for the rain, and he brings forth the wind from its storehouses.

00:26:57 – 00:27:01:	And when from the storehouses, a phrase that's repeated several times throughout scripture.

00:27:02 – 00:27:10:	Now today, thanks to modern science, we know that sunlight heats the earth's crust, causes

00:27:10 – 00:27:15:	differences in temperature, which cause differences in pressure in the atmosphere,

00:27:15 – 00:27:20:	and so we get wind. We get winds, we get cyclones, we get all manner, you know, everything from the

00:27:20 – 00:27:26:	small sprees to the most powerful tornado is all caused more or less by the same things.

00:27:26 – 00:27:32:	And none of it's supernatural. On paper, you can model it and the models work. You can have a model

00:27:32 – 00:27:38:	of how a tornado or a hurricane or a breeze works that doesn't involve supernatural. There's no

00:27:38 – 00:27:44:	variable for God in those models, and yet they're very predictive. The problem that we have today

00:27:44 – 00:27:51:	as functional deists is that because post-enlightenment, we have these new understandings of the facts

00:27:51 – 00:27:55:	on the ground. Oh, well, okay, that's how wind works. That's neat. And you know, maybe you're

00:27:55 – 00:28:03:	really into it and you become a meteorologist. That's fine. But if you then go on to deny

00:28:03 – 00:28:08:	Jeremiah 10 and the other passages that says that God brings forth the wind from his storehouses,

00:28:09 – 00:28:16:	you can't be Christian. And see, that's the reason that this is a subject that's worth tackling,

00:28:16 – 00:28:22:	is that if you're denying these trivial parts of Scripture, and I say that tongue-in-cheek,

00:28:22 – 00:28:28:	there's no such thing. That's the point. If you know how wind works and you decide, well,

00:28:28 – 00:28:33:	I know how that works at the atomic level, so it can't have anything to do with God,

00:28:33 – 00:28:39:	when God says, I did that, the disconnect is that the fact that we have no introspective

00:28:39 – 00:28:46:	through reason, how things work, doesn't tell us the ultimate cause of it working. And God

00:28:46 – 00:28:54:	Himself says that. He's doing all of it. One of the points that I've made elsewhere is that

00:28:55 – 00:29:00:	I think there's something very important to be discerned from revelation as John is being given

00:29:01 – 00:29:07:	his revelation in heaven, in his vision. When he first comes to the throne of God,

00:29:07 – 00:29:13:	and the terrifying beasts are there, they say two things. The very first thing that they say to him

00:29:13 – 00:29:18:	is, holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty who was and is and is to come.

00:29:20 – 00:29:24:	So right there, they're confessing the Trinity with the triple holy. And the next thing that they

00:29:24 – 00:29:30:	say to him as he stands before the throne, listen to this, worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive

00:29:30 – 00:29:36:	glory and honor and power, for you created all things and by your will they existed and were

00:29:36 – 00:29:42:	created. Now the reason I think that's so important is that the very first two things that are said

00:29:42 – 00:29:47:	in heaven before the throne of God have nothing to do with Christ's sacrifice on the cross.

00:29:48 – 00:29:51:	I do not say that to diminish that in the slightest. That is the third thing,

00:29:51 – 00:29:56:	but it's important I think that in order, it says then worthy are you to take the scroll

00:29:56 – 00:30:01:	and to open its seals, for you were slain and by your blood you ran some people for God

00:30:01 – 00:30:05:	from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you have made them a kingdom and

00:30:05 – 00:30:12:	priest to our God and they shall reign on the earth. So the 24 gathered around the throne

00:30:12 – 00:30:17:	do confess Christ as the Redeemer. That's absolutely a fundamental part of Christianity.

00:30:18 – 00:30:23:	There are two other things that are said before the throne of God first. The first is the Trinity

00:30:23 – 00:30:29:	and the second is declaring the glory of God in creation. And so again, as we introspect the glory

00:30:29 – 00:30:38:	of God in creation, as Christians that should give us a greater appreciation for the glory of God.

00:30:38 – 00:30:44:	It shouldn't make us appreciate science, which again is just, it's a word for knowledge. That's

00:30:44 – 00:30:49:	literally what it means. Scantia is knowledge. It's not special. It's not a different religion.

00:30:49 – 00:30:55:	It is a knowledge can only be of a true thing. So when we have scientific knowledge, which is

00:30:55 – 00:31:00:	redundant, of things, what we're saying is, okay, we understand better how it's working.

00:31:01 – 00:31:07:	And to Corey's point about Hume and his definition of what we can accept, that's the problem that

00:31:07 – 00:31:14:	science faces today. The established science, like made up things like anthropocentric, global warming,

00:31:15 – 00:31:21:	are complete nonsense. But because 95 doctors out of 100 say, this is how it works, no one is

00:31:21 – 00:31:29:	allowed to even get funding to say, well, that's complete nonsense. So these false beliefs have

00:31:29 – 00:31:36:	effects on our lives in the left-hand kingdom and in the right. As we get further and further away

00:31:36 – 00:31:41:	from believing that God is active in creation, it's easier to forget the other things. One of

00:31:41 – 00:31:47:	our recurring themes is that Satan doesn't care which lie you buy. As Christians and most of you

00:31:47 – 00:31:52:	listening are Protestants, you're not going to fall for the trick that you can save yourself,

00:31:52 – 00:31:58:	that you can do something to earn your salvation. We got that one nailed. We figured it out 500

00:31:58 – 00:32:03:	years ago and we've stuck to our guns. Satan didn't rest on his laurels. He's found other avenues of

00:32:03 – 00:32:09:	attack that are not frontal assaults on the second article of the creed. He's going after the other

00:32:09 – 00:32:13:	stuff that we don't have good arguments against. It's part of the reason that Stonequire exists.

00:32:13 – 00:32:18:	We're talking about this stuff that no one's really talked much about because Satan wasn't

00:32:18 – 00:32:24:	attacking it before. Now that Satan is attacking it, it should become one of the chief concerns of

00:32:24 – 00:32:31:	the church, capital C. Every Christian denomination is either struggling with some of these questions,

00:32:31 – 00:32:36:	things like traniism and other matters related to the flesh and how we're created,

00:32:36 – 00:32:42:	or they're adopting wholesale the religion of the world and they're ceasing to be Christian,

00:32:42 – 00:32:46:	even as they still have the creeds and confessions, whatever your confession is,

00:32:46 – 00:32:52:	near denomination. When you start whittling away at what God has done in his creation,

00:32:52 – 00:32:58:	that is an over-denial of the Creator. You can't get around that. If you say,

00:32:58 – 00:33:03:	no God, the wind didn't come from you, the wind came from solar radiation,

00:33:04 – 00:33:08:	God will judge you for that is a false confession that you were denying him.

00:33:08 – 00:33:10:	And if you deny God, he will deny you on the last day.

00:33:11 – 00:33:18:	I think it may be helpful for the listeners to go over, I guess really just a couple practical

00:33:18 – 00:33:25:	matters when it comes to deism in our own daily lives in the modern world.

00:33:25 – 00:33:33:	And it should be mentioned first, the first point, the Freemasons Ardeus.

00:33:35 – 00:33:39:	That is one of the reasons, of a number of very strong reasons,

00:33:40 – 00:33:46:	that Christians cannot be masons. And I know that some will think, well, my grandfather was a

00:33:46 – 00:33:55:	Christian and a Mason and maybe that was so. But if he was a Christian, it was because he was

00:33:55 – 00:34:03:	a bad Mason. And if he was a good Mason, he was not a Christian. Because again, Freemasonry

00:34:03 – 00:34:10:	is deist. It denies that God is active in his creation, that he is involved,

00:34:10 – 00:34:14:	and it denies the mysteries. It is exactly what we've been describing thus far.

00:34:15 – 00:34:22:	It is an organized form of deism. It is a deistic competing religion to Christianity.

00:34:22 – 00:34:30:	And so again, no, you cannot be a Mason and a Christian. These are incompatible. And historically,

00:34:30 – 00:34:38:	Lutheran churches, among others, have barred membership to Freemasons. And certain other groups

00:34:38 – 00:34:42:	have actually persecuted the masons historically, which is of course what a Christian ruler would do,

00:34:43 – 00:34:48:	because they're an anti-Christian cult. But then another point that I want to make

00:34:49 – 00:34:54:	is something that many have undoubtedly read at some point. And that is

00:34:56 – 00:35:01:	C.S. Lewis' Trilemma. I'm not going to recommend C.S. Lewis generally as a theologian. He is a

00:35:01 – 00:35:09:	decent apologist. But apologist and theologian usually not found together in one man. Usually a

00:35:09 – 00:35:14:	man who is a good theologian is a bad apologist, and a good apologist is usually not a very good

00:35:14 – 00:35:20:	theologian. Lewis should have let others do the theology, but his trilemma is actually

00:35:21 – 00:35:25:	quite sound. It is quite good. I'm not going to say that it is purely

00:35:26 – 00:35:32:	logically sound, as in you could turn it into a modal logic problem and arrive at the conclusion.

00:35:32 – 00:35:39:	That's not the point. It is compelling, which is why I am calling it sound. And the trilemma,

00:35:39 – 00:35:44:	of course, is when you deal with what Christ taught and what Christ claimed,

00:35:44 – 00:35:52:	you are left with three options for what Christ is. And that is lunatic, liar, or lord.

00:35:54 – 00:35:58:	You can say that he was a lunatic, that he was a crazy man who lived in the desert

00:35:59 – 00:36:05:	and told people some good stuff and claimed some crazy things like he was God.

00:36:06 – 00:36:09:	Or you can claim he was a liar, that he was just a swindler, that he was

00:36:10 – 00:36:16:	one of a long line, actually, in Palestine of those claiming to be a messiah.

00:36:18 – 00:36:23:	Or you can conclude that he is your lord. Because if you take his claim seriously,

00:36:24 – 00:36:30:	that's the only option. If the things that Christ did and the things that Christ claimed

00:36:30 – 00:36:33:	are both true, then he is your lord and savior.

00:36:35 – 00:36:41:	Deists don't want to deal with this. That's why you have men like Jefferson who want to say,

00:36:41 – 00:36:45:	I really like what Christ taught, and then cut out all this other stuff.

00:36:47 – 00:36:54:	Why is what Christ taught compelling absent his other claims? And why can we just jettison those

00:36:54 – 00:37:02:	claims? They don't have an answer for this from the deist perspective. It's the same sort of

00:37:02 – 00:37:09:	argument as those who would say, we agree with this confession insofar as we like what it says,

00:37:09 – 00:37:14:	which for Lutherans, of course, I'm speaking of quatness subscription to the book of Concord,

00:37:14 – 00:37:20:	which is an argument that the book of Concord, insofar as it is correct, correct, of course,

00:37:20 – 00:37:27:	being here from the position, the viewpoint of the one making the argument, insofar as it is

00:37:27 – 00:37:33:	correct, or in agreement with our interpretation of Scripture. That's completely meaningless.

00:37:34 – 00:37:38:	To say that you subscribe to something insofar as it is correct, in your opinion,

00:37:39 – 00:37:44:	means nothing. Insofar as the menu at my local Thai restaurant is correct. Yeah, of course,

00:37:44 – 00:37:49:	I subscribed to that. Because insofar as it's correct, it's true. That's the case for all

00:37:49 – 00:37:56:	documents. It's a totally meaningless claim. And that's the problem that we have here with deism.

00:37:57 – 00:38:06:	Their claims about Christ make him irrelevant, meaningless, and really highlight the bankruptcy

00:38:06 – 00:38:12:	of deism itself. I think one of the worst consequences of the industrial revolution

00:38:12 – 00:38:18:	was that it separated us from our food. It separated us from our food sources, from how

00:38:18 – 00:38:25:	God provides things to us. And there's so much of how God wanted the world to be ordered,

00:38:26 – 00:38:34:	that hinges on Providence, the hinges on him acting directly to us. Now, I'm not making a case for

00:38:34 – 00:38:41:	everyone returning to doing everything himself. I would be dead if that were the case. I can't

00:38:41 – 00:38:47:	grow anything. It's not fundamentally a rejection of specialization of labor, but I think it's

00:38:47 – 00:38:53:	important for us to acknowledge that in the industrial age, we have been separated from

00:38:54 – 00:39:01:	the immediacy of God's delivery of these things to us. As I said earlier, I mentioned before,

00:39:01 – 00:39:07:	a grocery store is a miracle. You can go in there any time of the year, any season, and basically

00:39:07 – 00:39:12:	get food pretty much from around the world. If you have a decent grocery store, it's going to be

00:39:12 – 00:39:17:	in good shape. It's going to be fresh. Some of the stuff is genetically engineered now,

00:39:17 – 00:39:22:	so it's been messed with, so it looks good. But even with that, the fact that there's always food

00:39:22 – 00:39:30:	when you're hungry, if you can afford it, is itself a miracle. And I think because we have

00:39:31 – 00:39:38:	gotten away from the lifestyle that involved hand-to-mouth in the sense that you are growing

00:39:38 – 00:39:43:	the food or the animal, the plants, whatever it is, whatever sort of gardening or farming you're

00:39:43 – 00:39:51:	doing on any scale, when that's no longer a part of our lives, we forget that someone's doing that

00:39:51 – 00:39:58:	on our behalf. And that specialization means that the farmer that witnesses birth and death,

00:39:58 – 00:40:03:	that witnesses the sacrifice of the animals as they're dying to be our food. The farmer sees

00:40:03 – 00:40:08:	that and it's kept out of sight. And frankly, one of the other whores of the industrial age is

00:40:08 – 00:40:13:	industrial farming, which is absolutely evil and should be destroyed and made illegal everywhere.

00:40:14 – 00:40:20:	That is vile what is done to creatures today. It makes me sick. If you can support local farmers

00:40:20 – 00:40:25:	just as an aside, please do that because a local farmer is always going to be taking better care

00:40:25 – 00:40:30:	of their animals. I have a friend a few years ago who grew some pigs. They had one bad day in their

00:40:30 – 00:40:35:	life and they didn't even know it. They were outside. They were eating like crazy. He cleared

00:40:35 – 00:40:40:	several acres with the pigs eating everything up and then they made incredibly good bacon and ham.

00:40:41 – 00:40:46:	And they never knew it was coming. They had a wonderful life as pigs and then we enjoyed them

00:40:46 – 00:40:53:	for a year as dinner. That is the way God has ordered things since Noah got off the ark.

00:40:54 – 00:40:58:	God said, as I gave you the plants, I now give you all the animals too. Everything is yours to eat.

00:40:59 – 00:41:03:	Now that we have grocery stores, now that we have all these other sources of things,

00:41:03 – 00:41:07:	we forget that God is still doing that for us. It's really the polar opposite of

00:41:08 – 00:41:13:	manna from heaven, where they were wandering in the desert and they had no food. And then it just

00:41:13 – 00:41:19:	rained this bread for them. And that was their sustenance. The immediacy of that

00:41:20 – 00:41:26:	is the same sort of immediacy we get from a grocery store, but without any of the notion

00:41:26 – 00:41:32:	that it's a miracle that God's doing it. I want to read again Matthew 6, just this passage,

00:41:32 – 00:41:39:	where Jesus is specifically preaching against us believing the watchmaker theory in any regard.

00:41:39 – 00:41:44:	He talks about the smallest things in this passage as an illustration that if you can trust

00:41:44 – 00:41:50:	God for the small things, you can certainly trust him for the big ones. Therefore, I tell you,

00:41:50 – 00:41:54:	do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink or about your body or

00:41:54 – 00:42:00:	what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds

00:42:00 – 00:42:06:	of the air. They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.

00:42:06 – 00:42:11:	Are you not of more value than they? In which of you, by being anxious, can add a single hour to

00:42:11 – 00:42:16:	his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field,

00:42:16 – 00:42:22:	how they grow. They neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you even Solomon in all his glory was not

00:42:22 – 00:42:27:	arrayed like one of these. But if God so closed the grass of the field, which today is alive and

00:42:27 – 00:42:32:	tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?

00:42:33 – 00:42:38:	Therefore do not be anxious saying, what shall we eat or what shall we drink or what shall we wear?

00:42:38 – 00:42:44:	For the Gentiles seek after these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.

00:42:44 – 00:42:48:	But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added

00:42:48 – 00:42:53:	to you. Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself.

00:42:53 – 00:42:59:	Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. This is a passage I've read at least once

00:42:59 – 00:43:04:	before in a previous episode that the reason I keep returning to it is, one, it countermans

00:43:04 – 00:43:11:	deism flatly. It's saying that your food, your clothing, all that comes to God not only is some

00:43:11 – 00:43:17:	sort of miraculous intervention outside of the laws of nature, but it's how God provides things.

00:43:18 – 00:43:23:	God gives you a job, God gives you a house, God gives you food. All the things that God gives you

00:43:23 – 00:43:29:	are his blessings, and they're every much as bit of blessing as the miraculous manna from heaven.

00:43:29 – 00:43:34:	God is simply fulfilling this promise to all his creatures in a different way in our lives,

00:43:34 – 00:43:39:	and that's a blessing too. I'm not complaining about grocery stores. I'm saying that the fact

00:43:39 – 00:43:44:	that we have this blessing of such great abundance should be a reason for even greater

00:43:44 – 00:43:50:	thanksgiving and not certainly a reason for us to forget that it's God that's producing all of it.

00:43:50 – 00:43:56:	He sends the rain, he sends the winds, he grows the crops, he gives us farmers and grocery stores

00:43:56 – 00:44:02:	and truck drivers, and all the things that are so mundane that without which we would starve.

00:44:03 – 00:44:09:	All of that is God acting in our lives, and the fact that there's scientific reasoning and

00:44:09 – 00:44:14:	understanding that let us think, oh, I understand how the economy works. I understand how the

00:44:14 – 00:44:20:	weather works. I understand how crop rotation and germination works. If you forget God,

00:44:20 – 00:44:24:	you've missed the entire point of everything. You'd be better off starving to death and remembering

00:44:24 – 00:44:31:	God than being fed and forgetting him. God is giving us both in nature and in scripture,

00:44:31 – 00:44:33:	and all we have to do is receive it with thanksgiving.

00:44:34 – 00:44:40:	I think a final point that we should make in the U.S. context, which of course is our primary

00:44:40 – 00:44:47:	context. Yes, we have listeners from all over the world, in fact, but in the U.S. context,

00:44:48 – 00:44:53:	many operate under the assumption that the U.S. doesn't have an established religion,

00:44:53 – 00:44:59:	an official religion, and that we cannot have that. Of course, that's a different argument

00:44:59 – 00:45:04:	from another time, perhaps. No, the Constitution doesn't actually bar an established religion,

00:45:04 – 00:45:11:	it bars Congress from doing it. But the U.S. does have an official religion,

00:45:12 – 00:45:18:	and it is deism. It is called ceremonial deism. Now, some, of course, will try to argue that

00:45:18 – 00:45:25:	it's not actually a religion, but it is, in fact, a religion. It was first mentioned in

00:45:25 – 00:45:33:	Lynch v. Donnelly, in a dissenting opinion, but I will read just a quick paragraph from that

00:45:33 – 00:45:39:	dissenting opinion. I would suggest that such practices as the designation of in God we trust,

00:45:39 – 00:45:44:	as our national motto, or the references to God contained in the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag,

00:45:45 – 00:45:52:	can best be understood in Dean Rostow's apt phrase, as a form of a ceremonial deism,

00:45:52 – 00:45:57:	protected from establishment clause scrutiny, chiefly because they have lost, through rote

00:45:57 – 00:46:07:	repetition, any significant religious content. And so, essentially, our state religion is an

00:46:07 – 00:46:12:	anti-religion. It is a rejection of Christianity, because, of course, that is ultimately what deism

00:46:12 – 00:46:21:	is, a rejection of Christianity, and this comes from the Jewish law school professor Eugene Rostow.

00:46:21 – 00:46:26:	I think at the time he was actually the dean of the law school. But his argument is that the U.S.

00:46:26 – 00:46:34:	has a ceremonial deism as its religion, which makes appeals to God or a higher authority that

00:46:34 – 00:46:42:	aren't actually truly religious in that they aren't really an appeal to God, but an appeal to a sort

00:46:42 – 00:46:53:	of tradition or belief in a higher principle, which, of course, is deism. And that is an important

00:46:53 – 00:47:01:	point about deism. It's this appeal to a higher power, which we, of course, see in Alcoholics

00:47:01 – 00:47:08:	Anonymous, or an appeal to Providence. Any number of different terms are used for this.

00:47:08 – 00:47:15:	If you see someone who uses only those terms, you should be deeply suspicious. That person is most

00:47:15 – 00:47:23:	likely a deist, not a Christian. Now, there is a bit of complexity or potential confusion here,

00:47:23 – 00:47:29:	because Christians can also use those terms. It is perfectly permissible for a Christian to refer

00:47:30 – 00:47:41:	to God as uppercase P Providence or as the higher power. However, a Christian will necessarily

00:47:41 – 00:47:47:	also refer explicitly to Christ as Lord and Savior at some point. A Christian will be able

00:47:47 – 00:47:53:	to give that confession of the faith. That's the dividing line. The deist will never give that

00:47:53 – 00:47:59:	confession of Christ. The Christian will give the confession of Christ even if he also uses

00:47:59 – 00:48:06:	these terms that overlap with terms used by deists. And so it is important, it is incumbent on Christians

00:48:06 – 00:48:10:	to pay close attention, particularly to those who are speaking in the public sphere,

00:48:11 – 00:48:17:	when they use these terms, and perhaps even more importantly, which terms they neglect to use.

00:48:18 – 00:48:24:	And so we the living in this generation, separated 2,000 years from Christ's ascension,

00:48:25 – 00:48:32:	have inherited this post-enlightenment version of Christianity that most of us hold lazily.

00:48:33 – 00:48:39:	It's simultaneously a true confession and a false confession, because if you stop believing that

00:48:39 – 00:48:46:	God is doing certain things, even while you believe he's God, we're not sitting here pronouncing

00:48:46 – 00:48:51:	judgment on who has true faith and who doesn't. God alone knows that. But we can say with absolute

00:48:51 – 00:48:57:	certainty that you are endangering your salvation by endangering your faith, by adopting a false

00:48:57 – 00:49:04:	confession that denies God's things that he reveals in scripture that he does. And one of the reasons

00:49:04 – 00:49:08:	that we want to do this episode, and one of the reasons that we began by specifically talking about

00:49:09 – 00:49:16:	the idea of a watchmaker God who's basically checked out now, is that as we've gotten into

00:49:16 – 00:49:22:	a gospel reductionistic version of Christianity within the church, where when we are professing

00:49:22 – 00:49:27:	our faith, we don't want to talk about God punishing sins anymore. We don't want to,

00:49:27 – 00:49:34:	we even want to say the word sin. We talk about brokenness. We talk about things being problematic,

00:49:34 – 00:49:40:	which is a Marxist term. We don't say sin. We don't say evil. That's one of the reasons that

00:49:40 – 00:49:46:	Cory and I say sin and evil a lot. It's not being obsessive or trying to be controversial. It's that

00:49:46 – 00:49:51:	that's what these things are. That's what God calls them. So when God calls something evil,

00:49:51 – 00:49:57:	and you call it problematic, there's a disconnect. And if you claim to be Christian and you won't

00:49:57 – 00:50:02:	say things the way God said them, you're going to get into trouble, even while you're confessing

00:50:02 – 00:50:09:	all the other parts of the faith that are true. And one of the chief problems that we have today

00:50:09 – 00:50:17:	is that Christians don't believe that God punishes sin in this life. We believe that you sin and

00:50:17 – 00:50:22:	sin and sin, or you try not to sin, and maybe you do a decent job. Obviously, no matter what,

00:50:22 – 00:50:28:	you're going to sin some. That's part of the Christian confession. We cannot live a perfect

00:50:28 – 00:50:34:	life. Jesus 2,000 years ago lived the only perfect human life. We will only be perfected in the

00:50:34 – 00:50:40:	resurrection, covered in his blood. Until that day, no matter how hard we try, we will fail.

00:50:40 – 00:50:48:	Nevertheless, we are to try to obey God in confession that he is our God. He is our creator.

00:50:48 – 00:50:55:	We are to confess as the angels before the throne, Holy, Holy, Holy, you are God Almighty.

00:50:55 – 00:50:59:	I will do what you say. That should be simple and obvious to everyone.

00:51:00 – 00:51:06:	Instead, what we hear from so many of our teachers is, oh, don't worry about that sin stuff. Jesus

00:51:06 – 00:51:13:	has it covered. Just try to do better and you're forgiven. And by no means would Coriore I diminish

00:51:13 – 00:51:20:	forgiveness in the slightest. The entire Christian faith is predicated upon the creator of the universe

00:51:20 – 00:51:27:	6,000 years ago coming 2,000 years ago to repair the damage that Adam did and that we perpetuate

00:51:27 – 00:51:33:	through our sinful lives and our sinful being. The fact that God paid the eternal price for our

00:51:33 – 00:51:39:	sins on the cross does not obviate the fact that there are temporal punishments for those sins.

00:51:40 – 00:51:45:	Not always, not automatic. It's not a one-to-one correlation. Nevertheless,

00:51:46 – 00:51:51:	it is absolutely the case that God will punish us in this life for the things that we do.

00:51:52 – 00:51:59:	I want to read now the general confession that's given publicly in virtually all Lutheran churches

00:51:59 – 00:52:06:	for hundreds of years. Oh, Almighty God, merciful Father, I, poor, miserable sinner, confess unto

00:52:06 – 00:52:12:	you all my sins and iniquities with which I have ever offended you and justly deserved your temporal

00:52:12 – 00:52:17:	and eternal punishment. But I am hardly sorry for them and sincerely repent of them. And I pray

00:52:17 – 00:52:22:	you of your boundless mercy and for the sake of the holy, innocent, bitter sufferings and death

00:52:22 – 00:52:27:	of your beloved Son, Jesus Christ, to be gracious and merciful to me, a poor sinful being.

00:52:28 – 00:52:34:	Now, every week Lutherans are saying, justly deserved your temporal and eternal punishment.

00:52:35 – 00:52:40:	And we focus a lot on the eternal punishment. That's hell. That's taken care of as a Christian

00:52:40 – 00:52:45:	with this confession, with a true confession of God. You are off the hook for the eternal

00:52:45 – 00:52:51:	punishment. We never think about the temporal punishment. As I said at the beginning, if any of

00:52:51 – 00:52:56:	you happen to be familiar with Roman Catholic doctrine, we're not remotely talking about the

00:52:56 – 00:53:04:	same thing. Temporal and eternal are two different spheres. One is bounded in eternity. The other

00:53:04 – 00:53:11:	is bounded in time. Temporal is not a synonym for temporary. And the reason I mention Roman

00:53:11 – 00:53:16:	Catholicism in particular is that this is how indulgences came about. They realized that if

00:53:16 – 00:53:25:	they could attribute some additional penance to pay in time for sins, they could raise money.

00:53:25 – 00:53:32:	It was one of the reasons politically that the Reformation was fought was that the St. Peter's

00:53:32 – 00:53:37:	Basilica, all the beautiful things in Italy, those were being built with indulgenced money

00:53:37 – 00:53:45:	extracted largely from Germans. It was a racial national extortion racket in the name of Rome,

00:53:45 – 00:53:51:	in the name of the Pope, to get money from one nation and give it to others. Now, the indulgences

00:53:51 – 00:53:57:	were everywhere, but they're pushed particularly hard in Germany. And so when Roman Catholics talk

00:53:57 – 00:54:03:	about temporal punishments, they specifically mean doing something to get off the hook in this

00:54:03 – 00:54:08:	life. That's not what we mean. That's not what the Lutherans are talking about. We talk about

00:54:08 – 00:54:14:	temporal punishment. Lutherans are talking about what Nathan brought to David in 2 Samuel 12.

00:54:15 – 00:54:20:	Nathan said, You have struck down your eye the Hittite with a sword and have taken his wife

00:54:20 – 00:54:25:	to be your wife, and you have killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. Now therefore, the sword

00:54:25 – 00:54:30:	shall never depart from your house, because you have despised me and have taken the wife of your

00:54:30 – 00:54:35:	eye the Hittite to be your wife. Thus says the Lord, Behold, I will raise up evil against you

00:54:35 – 00:54:40:	out of your own house, and I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor,

00:54:40 – 00:54:46:	and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this sun. For you did it secretly, but I will do

00:54:46 – 00:54:51:	this thing before all Israel and before all the sun. David said to Nathan, I have sinned against the

00:54:51 – 00:54:57:	Lord, and Nathan said to David, The Lord also has put away your sin. You shall not die. Nevertheless,

00:54:57 – 00:55:04:	because of this deed, you have utterly scorned the Lord. The child who is born to you shall die.

00:55:05 – 00:55:12:	So that's a temporal punishment. Now that is a specific, you might say, miraculous temporal

00:55:12 – 00:55:18:	punishment. But the fact remains, Nathan said, The Lord has put away your sin, meaning the eternal

00:55:18 – 00:55:26:	punishment. Nevertheless, David's son was killed by God. That was the temporal consequence. Notably,

00:55:26 – 00:55:31:	in light of some of our previous episodes, the temporal consequence for David's sin

00:55:31 – 00:55:38:	was visited upon his son, who, by our standards, had done nothing, but he was the product

00:55:38 – 00:55:46:	of an edible union, and God cursed it with death. So when we talk about temporal consequences for

00:55:46 – 00:55:50:	sin, as we've talked about in the past, we're dedicating this episode specifically to the point,

00:55:52 – 00:56:00:	God will sometimes use punishment in this life, in your life as you are living and breathing,

00:56:00 – 00:56:06:	punishment for sin that you have committed by way of chastisement and reproach, and to bring you to

00:56:06 – 00:56:13:	repentance. In the case of David and Nathan, he had already confessed his sin when he was confronted

00:56:13 – 00:56:21:	by Nathan, and yet still the punishment was visited upon him, even as God forgave the eternal price

00:56:21 – 00:56:27:	for that sin. So it is absolutely Christian doctrine that something that you do in this life

00:56:28 – 00:56:34:	will have punishment from God in this life. That's how this ties in with deism. If you believe in

00:56:34 – 00:56:40:	the deistic God, Jesus sent into heaven, and he's going to show up on the last day, but in between,

00:56:40 – 00:56:47:	God's not really going to do anything. Oh, maybe he feeds us, but the idea that God would cause in

00:56:47 – 00:56:53:	your life specific punishment for specific sin is a big deal, and it's something that has a direct

00:56:53 – 00:57:00:	impact on our lives, on every man's life. So when we're talking about obeying God, or not obeying

00:57:00 – 00:57:09:	God, and we're talking about Christian doctrine focusing, we would argue too much on forgiveness,

00:57:09 – 00:57:13:	I know that sounds terrible, but we're trying to make the point that if all of your focus is on

00:57:13 – 00:57:19:	forgiveness, that's the eternal forgiveness, the specific point we're making here is that

00:57:19 – 00:57:25:	God does not forgive the temporal punishments for your sins. You will still face some consequence.

00:57:25 – 00:57:30:	Again, not a one-to-one relationship. Not every sin has a direct and immediate punishment.

00:57:30 – 00:57:34:	God doesn't promise that. He does, however, promise that there will be temporal punishments for sins,

00:57:34 – 00:57:38:	and so when they are visited, Christians are to point to them and say,

00:57:38 – 00:57:45:	this is God's punishment for this sin. Sometimes as a demonstration that the thing itself is sin,

00:57:45 – 00:57:51:	when you see the punishment for the thing, that is a demonstration of the evil of it. It's a proof

00:57:51 – 00:57:58:	that it is sin, and when antinomians want to focus on, well, Jesus died for you, God forgave

00:57:58 – 00:58:03:	all that, don't worry about it, that's fundamentally destructive to the faith, because it allows you

00:58:03 – 00:58:08:	to keep on sinning and sinning and knowing that Jesus paid for it all on the cross, so you can

00:58:08 – 00:58:12:	just kind of do whatever you want and try not to sin so much. Well, when someone says you're

00:58:12 – 00:58:17:	actually destroying your body and your mind and your soul all at the same time by your evil,

00:58:18 – 00:58:22:	that's part of what Christians need to be able to tell each other. You should be able to tell

00:58:22 – 00:58:28:	your friend who is sinning, you're abusing drugs, look what is doing to your body, look what is

00:58:28 – 00:58:34:	doing to your family, you're being punished for your evil, stop being evil, and those punishments,

00:58:34 – 00:58:40:	some of them will go away. The consequences for the punishments may linger, but they're a consequence

00:58:40 – 00:58:46:	of sin in time. That's a part of the Christian faith, and it's one that we have to remember,

00:58:46 – 00:58:52:	because as the world gets worse and worse, I don't think we can just cling more and more to the cross

00:58:52 – 00:58:58:	and think about forgiveness and eternity while ignoring the destruction that we're inflicting

00:58:58 – 00:59:05:	on creation. Destroying creation is sin. Destroying your body is sin. We can't do that. When you

00:59:05 – 00:59:12:	continue to sin unrepentantly, you're jeopardizing your salvation. So this is a matter of profound

00:59:12 – 00:59:17:	urgency and importance. It's the whole reason that we're setting this up in terms of deism and

00:59:17 – 00:59:24:	temporal consequences, because rejection of a God who's active in the world fundamentally

00:59:24 – 00:59:29:	results in rejection of a God who will ever punish you for anything you do. Christians think that they

00:59:29 – 00:59:34:	can just live a consequence-free life by doing anything, and then as soon as they confess,

00:59:34 – 00:59:40:	okay, it's over, you can't, you know, not touch and can't get mad, you're forgiven in eternity,

00:59:40 – 00:59:43:	you may still have to face consequences in this life.

00:59:44 – 00:59:48:	And so this is where we'll get into the section about which we warned you at the beginning of

00:59:48 – 00:59:55:	the podcast, where we will be covering some topics that you may not want your children to hear just

59:55 – 01:00:03
yet. We're not going to cover this in particular depth because it gets very technical very quickly.

01:00:04 – 01:00:10:	Some of you may have noticed as an aside here that we didn't touch really on theistic evolution

01:00:10 – 01:00:15:	in this episode. We didn't do that because that is also a subject that gets very complex very

01:00:15 – 01:00:22:	quickly, both philosophically and biologically. We will probably eventually do a future episode

01:00:22 – 01:00:28:	on that. It will be a deep dive episode. It will be involved and complicated. You may want to listen

01:00:28 – 01:00:35:	to it a few times, but that is not this episode today. However, we are going to touch on some

01:00:35 – 01:00:43:	biology here because this ties into the temporal consequences of certain kinds of sin, particularly

01:00:43 – 01:00:53:	in this case, sexual sins. And so first off, it is necessary to mention just some basics about

01:00:53 – 01:01:00:	human reproduction for those who perhaps skipped health class biology, what have you, humans are

01:01:00 – 01:01:08:	oagamas. Essentially means that we have two different kinds of gametes that come together

01:01:08 – 01:01:13:	to produce offspring. That's all that means. And it's anisogamous, which is that they are

01:01:13 – 01:01:19:	different from one another, which is just to say that the sperm cell and the egg cell are different.

01:01:21 – 01:01:28:	Because of course, the sperm cell is motile and the ovum is not. Now, the reason I mention this

01:01:28 – 01:01:32:	is because the fact that the sperm cell is motile is what is important here.

01:01:34 – 01:01:42:	Because for a woman, when she has sex with a man, if he ejaculates inside her, those cells,

01:01:42 – 01:01:50:	the DNA contained in them, do not stay put. Because again, sperm are motile, they can move,

01:01:50 – 01:01:58:	and they do so. And so the ultimate consequence of this is that the woman winds up having some

01:01:58 – 01:02:05:	of the DNA from the man with whom she had sex in various places in her body, including in her brain

01:02:05 – 01:02:12:	and her cerebral spinal fluid. They've conducted autopsies on deceased, obviously, women,

01:02:13 – 01:02:22:	and found male DNA in the female brain. Now, this happens a number of different ways. One

01:02:22 – 01:02:30:	is having sex. If the man ejaculates inside the woman, well, you now have male DNA inside

01:02:30 – 01:02:35:	the woman, and it makes its way to various other places inside her body. The other, of course,

01:02:35 – 01:02:43:	would be pregnancy. Because if the woman becomes pregnant with a son, well, the son has male DNA,

01:02:43 – 01:02:50:	obviously, and there is an exchange of cells between the child and the mother. Some of those do

01:02:50 – 01:02:57:	cross the placental barrier. And so you will wind up with immune cells and others from the

01:02:57 – 01:03:02:	mother in the child and from the child in the mother. Now, there are some benefits to this.

01:03:04 – 01:03:10:	There have been cases where those cells that cross the barrier from the child to the mother

01:03:10 – 01:03:16:	have actually repaired damage to the mother's body and potentially saved her life. It's very

01:03:16 – 01:03:21:	obvious why God designed the system the way he did. There are some stresses on the female body

01:03:21 – 01:03:27:	during pregnancy. The pregnancy itself takes care of some of those stresses and potentially have

01:03:27 – 01:03:32:	other damage that existed before the pregnancy in order to help bring the pregnancy to term.

01:03:33 – 01:03:41:	One example that I read many years ago was a woman who had a defective heart valve.

01:03:41 – 01:03:47:	She got pregnant and the fetal cells actually fixed the heart valve,

01:03:48 – 01:03:54:	which obviously vastly increases the odds of the pregnancy coming to term. Because, of course,

01:03:54 – 01:03:58:	there will be stresses on the heart throughout the pregnancy and particularly during the birth.

01:03:59 – 01:04:03:	And so this mother survived, whereas she probably would not otherwise have survived

01:04:04 – 01:04:08:	because of that microchimerism, which is what we're talking about here.

01:04:09 – 01:04:14:	Microchimerism is when you have a population of cells, you actually have multiple populations

01:04:14 – 01:04:21:	of cells if you're talking about the distinct genetic lineages, but you have a grouping of cells

01:04:21 – 01:04:29:	where the overwhelming majority of them are from one line. In this case, the mother. They are primarily

01:04:29 – 01:04:37:	her cells, but you have a significant, although small, percentage of those cells

01:04:37 – 01:04:40:	that are from another line, usually defined as less than one percent.

01:04:41 – 01:04:45:	That may not sound like a lot to most people because it's, you know, less than one percent,

01:04:45 – 01:04:52:	one percent is small. But if one percent of your cells are foreign, that's huge. And no,

01:04:52 – 01:04:56:	I'm not talking about the ones in your gut. Those don't count. These are cells that are actually

01:04:56 – 01:05:03:	in your body, potentially doing things because some of these are going to be stem cells.

01:05:03 – 01:05:09:	And stem cells are going to produce other cells. Some of them are going to be hematopoietic,

01:05:09 – 01:05:14:	which is to say producing the components that make blood. Some of them are going to do other things.

01:05:15 – 01:05:18:	As I mentioned, the ones that, for instance, could repair a heart valve do something like that.

01:05:19 – 01:05:26:	And so for a woman, you have this microchimerism as a result of having sex with a man or being

01:05:26 – 01:05:32:	pregnant. And that can include if she has a spontaneous abortion, which is to say a miscarriage,

01:05:32 – 01:05:40:	or an actual abortion, because that also still leaves behind those cells. Now, the point of this

01:05:41 – 01:05:48:	and how it ties into what we're discussing with regard to sin and the temporal consequences of

01:05:48 – 01:05:55:	sin is that if a woman has sex with many different men, she is going to have DNA, not necessarily

01:05:55 – 01:06:01:	from every single man with whom she had sex. But from a number of them, the consequences of this

01:06:02 – 01:06:10:	are going to be biological and psychological. We'll start with the biology. Biologically,

01:06:10 – 01:06:17:	you are going to have expression of certain proteins, various other things. I said we won't

01:06:17 – 01:06:23:	delve too deeply into it, so we won't do that. But you're going to have various consequences

01:06:23 – 01:06:30:	for the woman herself. And additionally, for any children she has, from that point forward,

01:06:31 – 01:06:38:	from her having sex with a number of different men, you are going to actually change the ultimate

01:06:38 – 01:06:46:	genetic makeup of the child due to the mother's past actions, which means for a man, of course,

01:06:48 – 01:06:54:	if your wife is a virgin and she has sex with you and only you, your children are going to be

01:06:54 – 01:07:00:	maximally related to you. In fact, each additional child you have with that same woman is going to

01:07:00 – 01:07:06:	be more related to you because you are literally injecting your DNA into her every time you have

01:07:06 – 01:07:13:	sex with her, not just when she gets pregnant. And so she becomes not necessarily more like you

01:07:13 – 01:07:22:	over time, but more genetically yours. That is how God designed it. God was not speaking idly or

01:07:22 – 01:07:29:	even truly figuratively when he said that man and wife become one flesh. It is more literal than

01:07:29 – 01:07:36:	most people would happen to think and certainly more literal than those living a profligate

01:07:36 – 01:07:41:	libertine lifestyle in our modern world would like to think. And so biologically,

01:07:42 – 01:07:50:	your children are going to be less related to you as the man if your wife has had sex with

01:07:50 – 01:07:57:	a number of other men. And that just continues to get worse as she has more and more partners.

01:07:57 – 01:08:02:	Of course, there are other biological consequences. We know STIs and things like that. But these are

01:08:02 – 01:08:08:	the ones that are related to the discussion we're having here of the temporal consequences of sin.

01:08:09 – 01:08:13:	Because everyone knows the obvious ones. We're talking about the less obvious ones

01:08:14 – 01:08:20:	that Christian fathers should be teaching to their sons and their daughters. Because women

01:08:20 – 01:08:25:	need to know this is the thing that is going to happen to your body. You have no control over it.

01:08:25 – 01:08:30:	No control over it. It is a permanent change. And so there are very real,

01:08:31 – 01:08:40:	very permanent consequences of being promiscuous. And then to speak on the psychological consequences,

01:08:40 – 01:08:46:	there is evidence in the literature and really anyone who knows women who have made very poor

01:08:46 – 01:08:51:	life choices can confirm this. Certainly that's anecdote. But if you get enough anecdotes together,

01:08:51 – 01:08:57:	the plural actually is data, the psychological consequences for a woman of having many sexual

01:08:57 – 01:09:05:	partners start to look a lot like schizophrenia. Because there's psychological damage caused to

01:09:05 – 01:09:12:	a woman by engaging in this behavior. There is also probably some biological basis to it,

01:09:12 – 01:09:19:	because as mentioned previously, a lot of this DNA, or at least a good portion, ends up in the

01:09:19 – 01:09:24:	cerebral spinal fluid and ultimately in the woman's brain. We don't yet know exactly what

01:09:24 – 01:09:30:	is happening there, because some of this research is relatively recent. There's been centuries of

01:09:30 – 01:09:35:	speculation on these matters, but we now have it very well confirmed. This is established, we know

01:09:35 – 01:09:42:	this happens. But some of the earliest research, I guess in some cases, is only probably a decade,

01:09:42 – 01:09:50:	a decade and a half old. So some of this is still in an infancy stage. But we know positively,

01:09:50 – 01:09:56:	absolutely this is something that is happening. When a woman has sex with a man, she becomes,

01:09:56 – 01:10:04:	to some small degree, that man. He makes her his own. And so this is part of the reason

01:10:05 – 01:10:11:	that scripture so vehemently condemns promiscuity and sexual sin. Because sexual sin is indeed

01:10:11 – 01:10:19:	different in kind from other sins. Now, for men, it doesn't really have these consequences because

01:10:19 – 01:10:23:	there's nothing from the female body entering you during sex.

01:10:25 – 01:10:29:	That's not how God designed it. There's a reason God describes women as a field,

01:10:29 – 01:10:35:	and men are the ones sowing the seed. The field doesn't really change the farmer. The farmer

01:10:35 – 01:10:44:	changes the field. That is how God designed it. That is how God wants it to work. Because the wife

01:10:44 – 01:10:52:	becomes one flesh with her husband, she becomes his. And so as Christians, we have to address this

01:10:52 – 01:10:58:	because this is something that our culture does not want to accept, does not want to teach.

01:10:59 – 01:11:04:	Because if you teach this, if you speak on these actual consequences,

01:11:06 – 01:11:12:	then women are going to be hesitant to be promiscuous. Of course, there are other psychological

01:11:12 – 01:11:19:	consequences too. We know that there's essentially not quite exponential, but somewhere between

01:11:19 – 01:11:25:	exponential and linear decline in the success of marriages as you increase the number of sexual

01:11:25 – 01:11:33:	partners of the wife. Not the husband, but the wife. Because the number of sexual partners a woman

01:11:33 – 01:11:40:	has is directly related to her ability to pair bond. And so a woman who has had many sexual

01:11:40 – 01:11:46:	partners will not be able to pair bond. And if she cannot pair bond, the marriage is not going to

01:11:46 – 01:11:54:	succeed. Are there exceptions? Some few. But you're playing the odds, and the odds are not in your

01:11:54 – 01:12:01:	favor. And so that right there is why so many Christians and others do not want to recognize

01:12:01 – 01:12:07:	this reality. Because this is a temporal consequence of sin. And it is a permanent

01:12:08 – 01:12:14:	consequence of sin, permanent in the sense that in this life, it cannot be fixed. It cannot be

01:12:14 – 01:12:20:	changed. These women are permanently damaged because of their past actions. And there is

01:12:20 – 01:12:26:	nothing we can do to change that. They are going to have less of an ability to pair bond.

01:12:26 – 01:12:31:	Their children are going to be less related to their supposed fathers. This is simply the

01:12:31 – 01:12:40:	reality, the biological reality of how God made women. And so we have to deal with that. If we

01:12:40 – 01:12:45:	just obey God, if we listen to what he says in scripture, if we were faithful to what he commands,

01:12:45 – 01:12:50:	none of this would be a problem. This would be great. This is a good thing. This helps build

01:12:51 – 01:12:58:	families. This helps build marriages. This creates a stable society. But when we live in a society

01:12:58 – 01:13:04:	that is an open rebellion against the things that God says are good against the things that God

01:13:04 – 01:13:13:	commands us to do, this is damning. This destroys people. And we want to be able to say, speaking

01:13:13 – 01:13:19:	as the general generic sort of Christian, they want to be able to say, well, if you just believe in

01:13:19 – 01:13:28:	Jesus, all your problems will go away. It's a sort of therapeutic gospel. And it's false. All your

01:13:28 – 01:13:33:	problems will not go away. That is not what God promises. Your eternal problems will go away

01:13:33 – 01:13:38:	because you don't go to hell. That's certainly important. That is the most important thing.

01:13:38 – 01:13:40:	But the temporal consequences are real and they remain.

01:13:42 – 01:13:48:	You are not going to be cured of the STIs you've acquired through a libertine lifestyle.

01:13:49 – 01:13:53:	You are not going to have all the foreign DNA removed from your body if you're a woman or

01:13:53 – 01:14:01:	incidentally a homosexual male if you become a Christian. These things remain. These consequences

01:14:01 – 01:14:08:	remain. Yes, the eternal punishment for the actions that led to the temporal consequences,

01:14:09 – 01:14:13:	those eternal consequences are removed. But the temporal ones are not.

01:14:15 – 01:14:20:	And we do a great disservice to the younger generations, particularly parents and grandparents,

01:14:20 – 01:14:25:	do a great disservice to their children and grandchildren when they do not tell them these

01:14:25 – 01:14:30:	things. Because lying to them about them is one thing. Yes, that's certainly sinful.

01:14:30 – 01:14:36:	And that's a problem. You are derelict in your duty, but failing to teach them these things

01:14:36 – 01:14:40:	is also sinful because you are to train up a child in the way he should go.

01:14:41 – 01:14:44:	Because that promise of God that when he is old, he will not depart from it

01:14:45 – 01:14:48:	doesn't apply if you don't do the train up a child in the way he should go apart.

01:14:49 – 01:14:58:	The basic takeaway from this is that there are very real biological and psychological

01:14:58 – 01:15:05:	consequences of sex, particularly for women. And the consequences are temporally permanent.

01:15:06 – 01:15:13:	And so Christians need to recognize this and teach future generations these truths so that they can

01:15:14 – 01:15:20:	at least have the information necessary, maybe to make better decisions than the last handful

01:15:20 – 01:15:25:	of generations with regard to these matters. Because things are certainly now not trending

01:15:25 – 01:15:33:	upward. Because we continue to lie to the younger generations about the very real consequences

01:15:33 – 01:15:37:	of these lifestyles that are supposedly consequence-free.

01:15:37 – 01:15:42:	I'm sure that there are a lot of people listening right now who are shaking your head some disbelief.

01:15:42 – 01:15:48:	It sounds like a completely insane theory. We're going to put a number of links in the show notes.

01:15:48 – 01:15:53:	You can just Google microchimerism as in chimera. That is literally what we're talking about.

01:15:53 – 01:16:00:	We're talking about small-scale chimeric changes. It sounds insane. It sounds fanciful. It sounds

01:16:00 – 01:16:06:	like sci-fi. It sounds certainly sexist because there's two men saying women will be screwed up if

01:16:06 – 01:16:11:	you sleep around and men are not affected to the same degree. Everything about what Cori has just

01:16:11 – 01:16:17:	said is blasphemy against the spirit of this age. That's part of why we're talking about it.

01:16:18 – 01:16:22:	I would guess that most of you have probably never heard about this before. Or maybe if you've

01:16:22 – 01:16:26:	heard about it, you haven't thought about the consequences that it has for yourself and for

01:16:26 – 01:16:35:	your spouse, for your children. Think about what Cori has just said in terms of the two different

01:16:35 – 01:16:42:	ways to approach God's order. We talk a lot on Stone Choir about God ordered things in such a way.

01:16:43 – 01:16:49:	God says, do this and then we can either obey him or we can disobey him. It can go either way.

01:16:49 – 01:16:56:	You can do whatever you want. God rarely intervenes and prevents someone from disobeying him.

01:16:56 – 01:17:02:	That happens sometimes. It's part of the point of this episode. God does intervene. Most of the

01:17:02 – 01:17:08:	time, if you want to go off in sin, it's going to happen. Then you're going to suffer the consequences.

01:17:10 – 01:17:13:	The point of this part of the episode is that

01:17:13 – 01:17:22:	it's an orderly marriage where there's a union of one man and one woman in matrimony,

01:17:22 – 01:17:28:	the one flesh union, where they're both virgins coming in. Think about the consequences of

01:17:28 – 01:17:32:	microchimerism and that Cori described it. I just want to reiterate to emphasize,

01:17:33 – 01:17:39:	it's a fork in the road. On one hand, if you obey God, you the husband with your virgin wife,

01:17:39 – 01:17:47:	every time you lie down together, she becomes more yours. You become more one. It's not just

01:17:47 – 01:17:55:	a temporal one until you're done. She becomes more you, more yours every single time your entire life.

01:17:55 – 01:18:00:	By the end of your life, she was far more yours than when you took her hand in marriage.

01:18:01 – 01:18:08:	That's a blessing from God. That's absolutely a blessing. When you're not using contraception,

01:18:09 – 01:18:15:	more often than not, God is going to bless your physical union with children, with child after

01:18:15 – 01:18:22:	child. As Cori described, what happens when there's a baby in the mother's womb? The placental barrier

01:18:22 – 01:18:29:	is not an absolute barrier against the sharing of DNA. Just as in the case with the spermatozoa,

01:18:29 – 01:18:35:	I want to make explicit, we're not saying that the sperm somehow gets into the cerebrospinal fluid.

01:18:35 – 01:18:44:	However, the DNA does, not in every case, but the more times that a woman has a man inside her,

01:18:44 – 01:18:50:	the more chances there are for that foreign DNA to become a part of her body. Because of the

01:18:50 – 01:18:55:	circulatory system, it just floats around. There's no way of knowing or predicting where it's going

01:18:55 – 01:19:02:	to settle. Now, they've found in most of the organs in the body at various times, they have

01:19:02 – 01:19:09:	discovered male DNA inside women. It's the DNA. It's not just cells. It's subparts of cells. It's

01:19:09 – 01:19:16:	the DNA which then propagate for decades. There was one case that I read about where a 94-year-old

01:19:16 – 01:19:23:	woman had a substantial amount of male DNA in whatever part of her body that they were introspecting.

01:19:23 – 01:19:30:	Obviously, if she had had children, that would have been decades and decades prior. It's not just

01:19:30 – 01:19:36:	DNA floated around and then eventually got disposed of. It becomes a part of the woman's body

01:19:36 – 01:19:43:	and her own body perpetuates that foreign DNA as its own. She becomes less herself and more

01:19:44 – 01:19:49:	the man with whom she has had sex. So, when you're properly ordering these things,

01:19:49 – 01:19:57:	that man is your husband. Every time you have sex, there's more of him in you,

01:19:57 – 01:20:02:	remaining. Every time you have a child, that child becomes a part of you. That's not just a metaphor.

01:20:03 – 01:20:08:	Mothers talk about their children being a part of them. We now know scientifically,

01:20:09 – 01:20:15:	the scientific part is certainly less important than the metaphysical, spiritual part of a child

01:20:15 – 01:20:21:	being of the mother, but it's also physically real. The more children that she has, the more of their

01:20:21 – 01:20:29:	DNA is in her. The children's DNA propagates as well. The firstborn will propagate his or

01:20:29 – 01:20:34:	her DNA to subsequent offspring so that the children will be even more closely related.

01:20:37 – 01:20:41:	This is a blessing. This is a beautiful thing. As Corey said, this is how God designed

01:20:41 – 01:20:49:	all this to work. That is absolutely a beautiful miracle for a family to be so closely united

01:20:49 – 01:20:55:	that they're all fundamentally of the Father by virtue of that union. That's incredible.

01:20:55 – 01:21:01:	And on the flip side, you have the girl who whores, the girl who chases after man after

01:21:01 – 01:21:07:	man and does the same things except in a disordered fashion. The more times that happens,

01:21:08 – 01:21:14:	the more disjoint her own insides become, the more separate people she has in tiny pieces in her.

01:21:15 – 01:21:19:	And as Corey mentioned, I want to say this explicitly, the more times that a girl has had

01:21:19 – 01:21:26:	sex with different men, the greater the likelihood and the greater degree that any offspring you

01:21:26 – 01:21:32:	have with her, your with her, will not be your own, not to the same degree as if she were a virgin.

01:21:32 – 01:21:38:	Yes, they'll mostly come from your DNA, but some of the DNA in your children of a girl who has been

01:21:38 – 01:21:43:	whoring will be the other men. They will leave their mark on her and it will be in your children.

01:21:44 – 01:21:50:	And we see examples sometimes where that may actually have been the case. When you see a twin,

01:21:51 – 01:21:54:	twins where one is black and the other is white from the same biological parents,

01:21:54 – 01:22:00:	everyone's like, oh, it's a miracle. Race isn't real. Well, race is real. I would bet a large

01:22:01 – 01:22:06:	amount of folding money that that woman in that particular example had had sex with an African

01:22:06 – 01:22:12:	American and his DNA was hanging out enough to change her the skin color of one of the children.

01:22:14 – 01:22:19:	These have real consequences. As Corey said, they have psychological consequences too,

01:22:19 – 01:22:23:	particularly because some of this does literally get into the brain. And we're not just talking

01:22:23 – 01:22:28:	about DNA floating around in the fluid. It literally gets into the cells, which then replicate.

01:22:28 – 01:22:35:	And so the brain of a woman in some small part is replaced by the brain of whichever man has been

01:22:35 – 01:22:42:	inside her. If it's your wife, that's a blessing. If it's random men, that's absolutely a curse.

01:22:42 – 01:22:47:	It's horrifying. And so part of the reason that we broke our general rule with this episode of

01:22:47 – 01:22:52:	trying to avoid subjects that you wouldn't be able to listen to with your kids,

01:22:52 – 01:22:57:	is that this is so important for you to share with your kids. And whatever manner is suitable,

01:22:57 – 01:23:01:	they don't need to listen to this. They need to hear from you. Don't ever have sex with anyone

01:23:01 – 01:23:08:	who is not your spouse, ever. One man, one woman forever. Any deviation from that makes things

01:23:08 – 01:23:13:	exponentially worse. And to the point of the temporal consequences, it's permanent. There's

01:23:13 – 01:23:20:	no undo for this. There's forgiveness, but there's no undo. It's fundamentally the same

01:23:20 – 01:23:27:	as a man or a woman deciding that they're transsexual. And that they need to mutilate their

01:23:27 – 01:23:33:	body to be the other sex. So men will chop off their genitals, women will chop off their breasts.

01:23:34 – 01:23:40:	If, on the rare occasions when those people repent and return to Christ, their body parts

01:23:40 – 01:23:46:	don't grow back, once you mutilate your body, once you do this physical harm that is an obvious

01:23:47 – 01:23:54:	punishment for the sin you're committing, there's no undo. God will fix you in the resurrection

01:23:54 – 01:23:58:	to what degree we don't know. We don't know what our perfect resurrected bodies are going to be like

01:23:58 – 01:24:05:	except that they'll be ours. But we do know that until you die, you're going to be the way you are.

01:24:05 – 01:24:12:	Whatever you damage stays that way. That is a big deal. And the reason that we want to talk about

01:24:12 – 01:24:18:	this is that don't do the crime and you won't face the punishment. See, when we talk about temporal

01:24:18 – 01:24:27:	consequences, in the case of David and Bathsheba and Uriah and Nathan, when Nathan came to David

01:24:27 – 01:24:32:	and said to him what God proclaimed that his child would die, there wasn't a direct connection

01:24:32 – 01:24:37:	between his action and the child dying. The child died as a punishment against David.

01:24:38 – 01:24:44:	However, in these other cases, it's much more obvious what the connection is. If you're a man

01:24:44 – 01:24:50:	who thinks you're a woman and you chop off your penis, what's the punishment for that? It worked.

01:24:51 – 01:24:56:	That's the punishment. It worked. When we sin against our own bodies, it works.

01:24:56 – 01:25:01:	God doesn't need to have some other separate punishment to just be delivered from the sky,

01:25:02 – 01:25:06:	not discounting at all that that will happen. We know for a fact it happened to Sodom and Gomorrah.

01:25:07 – 01:25:13:	But the immediate effect is what is described at the end of Romans 1. For this reason,

01:25:13 – 01:25:18:	God gave them up to dishonorable passions for their women exchange natural relations for those

01:25:18 – 01:25:24:	that are contrary to nature. And the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were

01:25:24 – 01:25:29:	consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in

01:25:29 – 01:25:35:	themselves the due penalty for their error. That's explicitly a temporal punishment.

01:25:36 – 01:25:42:	And it wasn't fireballs from the sky. It was STDs. It was corruption of the flesh as a direct

01:25:42 – 01:25:49:	consequence of the flesh being used for corrupt purposes. So when we're talking today about

01:25:49 – 01:25:56:	temporal consequences in opposition to a deistic God, this is why Satan wants us to believe.

01:25:56 – 01:26:01:	If you want to believe in God, the Creator, that's fine, but he doesn't do anything.

01:26:01 – 01:26:05:	He's not really watching. Maybe there's a judgment date someday, but you can live your life however

01:26:05 – 01:26:10:	you want and there'll be no consequences. Jesus died for everything and you're saved and that's

01:26:10 – 01:26:17:	great. Don't worry about it. The reality is very different. The God of Scripture says,

01:26:17 – 01:26:23:	when you sin against him, you may well face consequences. He doesn't promise, again,

01:26:23 – 01:26:28:	there will be a one-to-one relationship, but he promises that there is a due penalty for those

01:26:28 – 01:26:36:	sins. And if you receive it, you can't do anything but confess. And so one of the things that's

01:26:36 – 01:26:43:	happened recently in Lutheranism in the last few years, there was a blow up not long ago related to

01:26:43 – 01:26:53:	the claim online that men prefer debt-free virgins without tattoos. Now, this is a true claim.

01:26:53 – 01:26:59:	This is a moral claim. It is what some would call a judgmental claim. And that's the root of this.

01:26:59 – 01:27:05:	That's the root of the antinomian spirit within so much of Christianity today. When a man says,

01:27:05 – 01:27:10:	I would prefer to marry a girl who is debt-free, she's a virgin and she doesn't have tattoos.

01:27:11 – 01:27:18:	The immediate response from the antinomian is shrieking in rage and terror. How dare you judge

01:27:18 – 01:27:24:	someone for their past actions? She confessed, she repented, God forgives her, you must do the same.

01:27:25 – 01:27:30:	And that's a complete sleight of hand because that's not at all what's being talked about.

01:27:31 – 01:27:38:	If you have a girl who is $200,000 in debt, who has slept with 30 men and who's covered

01:27:38 – 01:27:44:	in tattoos, she's going to be a worse wife. Absolutely, period, she's going to be a worse

01:27:44 – 01:27:51:	wife. Christians should be able to say that because it's plainly obvious. If she's $200,000

01:27:51 – 01:27:56:	in debt or any amount of debt, what is that going to do to your family finances? Well now,

01:27:56 – 01:28:03:	you're a debt slave for the bad decisions of her father before you even met her. If she's a whore,

01:28:03 – 01:28:07:	you now are going to have children with a woman who's not going to be able to properly bond with

01:28:07 – 01:28:11:	you and your kids won't be related to you, not to the same degree as if she were actually yours.

01:28:12 – 01:28:17:	And tattoos are self-loathing. When a girl is covered in tattoos, she's saying, I hate myself.

01:28:18 – 01:28:22:	Usually they go hand in hand because she's so messed up from the other bad choices

01:28:22 – 01:28:29:	that she has left herself in such a state that even when she turns to God, pray that every

01:28:29 – 01:28:37:	single one of them would, would repent of those sins, would return to the flock, and would stop

01:28:37 – 01:28:44:	doing those things. The point of this is that the temporal consequences remain. She can be forgiven

01:28:44 – 01:28:50:	by God for all those things. She's still $200,000 in debt. She still has a body riddled with other

01:28:50 – 01:28:56:	men's DNA. She still has a body that's been defaced in opposition to how God made her flesh.

01:28:57 – 01:29:03:	And so when you as a man are looking at two prospective mates, you must choose the one who

01:29:03 – 01:29:09:	is going to be a better choice for you. That's a matter of wisdom. Now, part of the problem that

01:29:09 – 01:29:15:	we have today is that so many people are screwed up, so many people have sinned so grievously

01:29:15 – 01:29:21:	that it's almost impossible to find a girl that doesn't have a body count. That's consequential.

01:29:21 – 01:29:27:	And there's a small way in which the people who say we have to just forgive her and move on

01:29:28 – 01:29:34:	are not entirely wrong. And that is this one narrow point. As a generation where virtually every girl

01:29:34 – 01:29:41:	has done these things, the only way to perpetuate the human race is for some of them to get married

01:29:41 – 01:29:46:	and to have kids. And maybe you have a broken generation or two, but then if they're faithful,

01:29:46 – 01:29:51:	you can put things back together. But if you as a man have a choice between one type of girl and

01:29:51 – 01:29:56:	the other, you only have one choice. You should never choose the girl who has done this sort

01:29:56 – 01:30:01:	of harm to herself, because it's not a question of you holding her past sins against her. And

01:30:01 – 01:30:07:	that's a crucial point here. It's not saying Jesus forgave her, but I'm not going to. Jesus

01:30:07 – 01:30:12:	forgives her in eternity. You can tell that Jesus hasn't lifted the penalty for her temporal

01:30:13 – 01:30:18:	sins because she's still stuck with them. She's still riddled with another man's DNA and covered

01:30:18 – 01:30:23:	in tattoos and $200,000 in debt. If Jesus had forgiven those in the sense that they mean that

01:30:23 – 01:30:28:	you care about, they would all vanish. She would go back to being a virgin. She would go back to

01:30:28 – 01:30:33:	being the 16-year-old girl under her father's roof before all those bad choices were made.

01:30:34 – 01:30:43:	So when Christians try to set soteriology of Jesus' relationship to us and forgiving our sins

01:30:44 – 01:30:51:	against what we have to live with in this life, it's a false dichotomy, and it's one that ultimately

01:30:51 – 01:30:56:	will lead to destruction. Because as Corey says, if you forgive all those sins, if you fall in love

01:30:56 – 01:31:03:	with her madly, and you want to marry the girl who has all those problems, you're going to live

01:31:03 – 01:31:08:	with the consequences of that. She will have more mental problems. She absolutely will. She will

01:31:08 – 01:31:14:	not love you as much as a girl who never did those things because she biologically can't.

01:31:15 – 01:31:20:	I think that's the key takeaway from that one aspect of it. A girl who has had sex with multiple

01:31:20 – 01:31:27:	men literally cannot love her husband as much as one who hasn't. It's a fact. There are links in

01:31:27 – 01:31:32:	the show notes to demonstrate this. It sounds unforgiving. It sounds unchristian. It sounds

01:31:32 – 01:31:37:	like we're trying to set science in all this new stuff in opposition to what Scripture says.

01:31:37 – 01:31:41:	The point we're making is that Scripture says what we say. Scripture says that there's a temporal

01:31:41 – 01:31:46:	punishment for sins, and sometimes you can't see it. Sometimes it doesn't happen. Sometimes you

01:31:46 – 01:31:51:	don't know about it. You certainly can't see microchimerism. You can meet a girl who will lie

01:31:51 – 01:31:56:	about her body count and say she's a virgin or say one or two guys. Well, that's not too bad.

01:31:57 – 01:32:04:	You can't see the consequences, but they're there. Like we talked about in the last couple

01:32:04 – 01:32:09:	episodes, the reason for sharing these things is not even so much for the guys who are listening

01:32:09 – 01:32:14:	to try to find a wife, although it's certainly for you. It's really, in large part, for you,

01:32:14 – 01:32:17:	if you're going to find a wife and then have kids or the parents in the audience,

01:32:18 – 01:32:22:	make sure that your kids don't make any of these mistakes to begin with. Obviously,

01:32:22 – 01:32:29:	that's impossible to do perfectly, but warn them. Tell your daughters every man you sleep with becomes

01:32:29 – 01:32:35:	a part of you forever, and when someday you decide you want to settle down and give your

01:32:35 – 01:32:40:	husband children, they won't be his. Most girls are going to find that pretty horrifying. Some of

01:32:40 – 01:32:44:	the girls who are listening right now probably find that pretty horrifying. I can assure you,

01:32:44 – 01:32:50:	the men who hear it, including myself, find it horrifying. That's messed up. Why? Because it's

01:32:50 – 01:32:55:	not how God designed things. God designed things where one man and one woman come together,

01:32:55 – 01:33:00:	and that's it. The propagation within that family unit is a beautiful, wholesome thing.

01:33:00 – 01:33:06:	We've created the opposite with our disobedience, and we can't paper over the consequences of that.

01:33:08 – 01:33:13:	We're going to have to do the best we can with this generation and pray that the next generation

01:33:13 – 01:33:19:	will heed the warning of our own, to heed the warning of, hey, don't do all these stupid things

01:33:19 – 01:33:23:	that we've done because they're destructive. Not only do scriptures hate it, but if you're

01:33:23 – 01:33:28:	dumb enough to need science to tell you too, we got both now. We can absolutely prove that

01:33:28 – 01:33:32:	you're destroying your life by doing these things. Whatever reason is good enough for you not to do

01:33:32 – 01:33:38:	them, go with it. It should be God's obedience, and that's the point. The reason we talk about

01:33:38 – 01:33:43:	God says, and when we don't do, we get the consequences, is that that's what God says.

01:33:43 – 01:33:48:	If you just obey God and you don't know anything about science, you don't know anything about

01:33:48 – 01:33:53:	how any of this stuff works, it doesn't matter. The obedient person who serves God faithfully

01:33:53 – 01:33:58:	will simply never face these consequences. That is a blessing, and that is what we should

01:33:58 – 01:34:03:	be sharing with our children in future generations. What we're dealing with here,

01:34:04 – 01:34:08:	really, when we speak on the issue of temporal consequences and more so,

01:34:09 – 01:34:18:	those who more or less reject temporal consequences is Gnosticism. It's an ancient heresy that

01:34:18 – 01:34:23:	continually crops up in the church, and there are some who will say that

01:34:24 – 01:34:29:	Christians are paranoid about Gnosticism, at least certain Christians, and they see it everywhere.

01:34:30 – 01:34:35:	The problem is that it is everywhere and that it constantly crops up. It is something that we have

01:34:35 – 01:34:42:	been fighting in the church for millennia, very actively, certainly for centuries.

01:34:43 – 01:34:48:	It comes in ebb and flow. Sometimes it is a very strong opponent to the church,

01:34:49 – 01:34:53:	sometimes it's weaker. Today, it's very strong.

01:34:56 – 01:35:01:	In our society, we have a very weird relationship to the body, to the flesh,

01:35:02 – 01:35:08:	because there's a very strong strain of transhumanism in modern thought, the idea that we can

01:35:08 – 01:35:17:	transcend this mortal coil and become something greater, whether it is through hallucinogens,

01:35:17 – 01:35:23:	some try that route, or body modification, which is to say, perhaps cybernetics,

01:35:24 – 01:35:28:	or genetic engineering, whatever it is, there's this belief that we can transcend

01:35:29 – 01:35:36:	our mere flesh. Then on the other hand, there are those who totally deny the flesh and focus

01:35:36 – 01:35:43:	instead on the spirit and think, well, the flesh doesn't matter. Ultimately, we're a spirit,

01:35:43 – 01:35:50:	and so what happens to the flesh is irrelevant. That is part of some forms of ancient paganism,

01:35:50 – 01:35:56:	particularly the Greek paganism, to some degree the Romans. There's a bit of it in Hinduism and

01:35:56 – 01:36:01:	other places, certainly the escape from Samsara, things like that, but

01:36:03 – 01:36:14:	Gnosticism tells you to deny the reality of the flesh. That is what underlies those who argue

01:36:15 – 01:36:21:	against temporal consequences for sin. What they're ultimately saying is that it's the spirit

01:36:21 – 01:36:27:	alone that matters, and the flesh isn't real, because as soon as you are converted,

01:36:27 – 01:36:32:	as soon as you believe in Christ, as soon as you have faith, well, your spirit is now right with

01:36:32 – 01:36:37:	God, and so the flesh, well, that's irrelevant. That's just something you have for a time, and

01:36:37 – 01:36:43:	no, that's not what Scripture says. That's not what God made. You are body and soul. You are not

01:36:44 – 01:36:50:	soul writing around in body. You are not body that happens to have a soul. You are soul and body,

01:36:50 – 01:36:59:	body and soul. You are both of those as a human being. If you lose either of those, you're incomplete.

01:37:01 – 01:37:05:	And so the destruction of the flesh, of course, yes, is one thing you have.

01:37:05 – 01:37:10:	Christ says, don't be afraid of those who can kill your body, rather fear God alone who can

01:37:10 – 01:37:16:	destroy both body and soul in hell. But those are both real. That's why they're both mentioned

01:37:16 – 01:37:22:	there. Because both the body and the soul can be destroyed, and note what it says about hell.

01:37:22 – 01:37:31:	Body and soul. Those in hell are still body and soul, because that is what it means to be a human

01:37:31 – 01:37:38:	being. And so when you deny the reality of temporal consequences, when you deny the reality of biology,

01:37:38 – 01:37:43:	whatever it happens to be, whether you deny that microchimerism happens, whether you deny that there

01:37:43 – 01:37:49:	psychological consequences, in this case with a biological basis for women who are promiscuous,

01:37:49 – 01:37:55:	or you deny the reality of the sexes, you deny the reality of race, whatever it happens to be,

01:37:55 – 01:38:02:	whichever one of these biological truths you deny, ultimately what you are doing is rejecting the

01:38:02 – 01:38:07:	reality of the flesh and telling God that he's wrong and know I'm just a spirit and this flesh

01:38:07 – 01:38:15:	is just something you gave me for a time and it really doesn't matter. That is not what it means

01:38:15 – 01:38:22:	to be a human being. That is not what scripture teaches, that is not what Christians are permitted

01:38:22 – 01:38:30:	to hold or must hold. Christians must hold that the flesh is real. Both the flesh and the spirit.

01:38:30 – 01:38:37:	As I've mentioned before, when this topic has arisen, I am deliberately ignoring dualism

01:38:37 – 01:38:42:	versus trealism. I hold to the latter. That's not the discussion right now.

01:38:43 – 01:38:50:	You are body and soul. You have to affirm, as a Christian, the reality of both. And the flesh

01:38:50 – 01:38:58:	comes with very real consequences in time when you abuse the flesh, or when you suffer something,

01:38:58 – 01:39:03:	because of course it's not always abuse. If you lose a limb, having faith in Christ does not

01:39:03 – 01:39:10:	regrow the limb, and you may have lost that due to no error on your part. Because sin does not

01:39:10 – 01:39:17:	have consequences just for the sinner. Sin has consequences for everyone around the sinner.

01:39:18 – 01:39:23:	Sin has consequences for creation. Creation fell because Adam sinned.

01:39:24 – 01:39:32:	Everything was subjected to futility because of Adam's sin. Your pets die because Adam sinned.

01:39:32 – 01:39:39:	Your pets die because you sinned. Sin has very real consequences here in time. It will also

01:39:39 – 01:39:44:	have consequences in eternity if you do not believe in Christ. But the consequences in time

01:39:45 – 01:39:51:	are not removed simply because you have faith. They will be removed in eternity

01:39:51 – 01:39:59:	because you will be perfect. But they are not removed in time. And to deny that is to become

01:39:59 – 01:40:08:	agnostic. And a Christian cannot be agnostic because Gnosticism is a rejection of Scripture.

01:40:08 – 01:40:12:	It is a rejection of God's truth. And it is also a rejection of what it means to be human.

01:40:12 – 01:40:16:	It is a rejection of our nature and our essence, which of course is again

01:40:16 – 01:40:21:	a rejection of God because rejecting the creation is rejecting the Creator.

01:40:22 – 01:40:30:	And so that is why we keep bringing up these sorts of topics. Because there are Christians who

01:40:30 – 01:40:36:	stumble into these heresies because they listen to the world and they don't pay attention. They

01:40:36 – 01:40:41:	don't assess. They don't look critically at what it is they're being told to believe. And so they

01:40:41 – 01:40:48:	stumble into heretical position. Now maybe felicitous inconsistency will save them. Maybe they

01:40:48 – 01:40:54:	don't really ultimately in their heart of hearts believe these lies they profess. Maybe they trust

01:40:54 – 01:40:59:	in Christ alone. But that isn't the position that you want to take before the judgment throne.

01:41:01 – 01:41:07:	You want to hold to a true confession that doesn't have all these little lies attached to it.

01:41:07 – 01:41:12:	You don't want to have to rely on, well, someone lied to me and I was deceived and that's not an

01:41:12 – 01:41:19:	excuse. Certainly it is better to have been deceived and believed something false

01:41:19 – 01:41:24:	than it is to willfully believe something false. But ignorance is not an excuse.

01:41:25 – 01:41:32:	The pagans who lived in deepest, darkest Africa millennia ago and never heard the Gospel

01:41:32 – 01:41:38:	did not therefore have an excuse. Because God's law is written on the human heart

01:41:38 – 01:41:44:	and there are very real consequences in time for the individual and generationally for that

01:41:44 – 01:41:54:	person's progeny when that man sins. So do not think that as a Christian you can just say,

01:41:54 – 01:41:58:	well, I believe in Christ and therefore all these other things are irrelevant.

01:41:59 – 01:42:04:	That is not how it works. Belief in Christ is the most important thing, yes.

01:42:05 – 01:42:10:	But all of the other truths flow from that. Because if you believe in God, if you believe

01:42:10 – 01:42:16:	in Christ, if you believe in this ultimate crown of reality and truth, then you must

01:42:16 – 01:42:22:	believe everything else about him. Not just that he gave his only begotten son to die for you,

01:42:23 – 01:42:26:	that he raised him again from the dead, that you are covered in his blood,

01:42:27 – 01:42:33:	that you are made whole in Christ, that you're forgiven. Because there are other truths about

01:42:33 – 01:42:38:	God, he reveals them in nature, he reveals them in Scripture, and as Christians we are

01:42:38 – 01:42:44:	beholden to believe in those things. Because to believe otherwise is to believe something

01:42:44 – 01:42:52:	false about God at best, and at worst it is to accuse God of lying. And if you accuse God of lying,

01:42:53 – 01:43:00:	things don't get better from there. You will eventually apostatize. That is the end of that

01:43:00 – 01:43:07:	road. That is the broad path. And so all of these truths about God that we keep mentioning in these

01:43:07 – 01:43:13:	episodes, the reason they are important, as we have said so many times, they are not the core of

01:43:13 – 01:43:19:	the faith. That's not the point. The point is, if you believe a lie, if you believe any lie,

01:43:19 – 01:43:25:	because Satan's goal is to get you to believe any lie. He just wants an opening somewhere,

01:43:25 – 01:43:28:	doesn't matter, he doesn't need you to open the front door, just open the back window,

01:43:28 – 01:43:35:	he'll happily climb in. If you believe a lie, then you will eventually be faced with a choice.

01:43:36 – 01:43:43:	And that choice will be accepting you believe the lie, rejecting it and believing the truth,

01:43:43 – 01:43:49:	which is what we are calling you to do, or you can refuse to accept that you believed a lie,

01:43:49 – 01:43:55:	because it's uncomfortable to have to admit that, and you can double down. And you'll double down

01:43:55 – 01:44:02:	by believing another lie, and another lie, and another lie, and it never ends, because as we've

01:44:02 – 01:44:09:	said many times, there's no floor, it can always get worse. And so yes, there are temporal consequences

01:44:09 – 01:44:16:	of sin. Yes, those stick with you. Yes, those will not go away in this life in many cases.

01:44:17 – 01:44:21:	But if you continue sinning, it will continue getting worse. And so stop.

01:44:22 – 01:44:29:	Turn from your sins, repent, and live the best life you can even with the consequences of your past

01:44:29 – 01:44:38:	sin. If you don't accept that those consequences are real, you will forever be lying about the

01:44:38 – 01:44:44:	nature of reality, the nature of your own flesh, and the nature of God. That is not how you have

01:44:44 – 01:44:50:	a right relationship with God. You have a right relationship with God by accepting His truth,

01:44:51 – 01:44:59:	accepting the consequences of your past errors, and attempting to live the best life you can going

01:44:59 – 01:45:07:	forward with what God has given you in light of both God's gifts and the consequences of your

01:45:07 – 01:45:14:	actions. The Christian life is not a life of perfection. It is a life of repentance,

01:45:15 – 01:45:18:	and yes, attempting to do better. That is part of the Christian life. You do

01:45:19 – 01:45:25:	have good works, because good works flow from a living faith. But it's not perfection. You won't

01:45:25 – 01:45:33:	be perfect in this life, those temporal consequences do remain. As a Christian, affirm the truth,

01:45:33 – 01:45:40:	and move forward. I want to close with a brief story that's recounting issues, etc. episode from

01:45:40 – 01:45:45:	2019. As I was listening to it back when I used to still listen to issues and thought that Todd was

01:45:45 – 01:45:51:	a decent guy, this particular episode that I'm going to recount briefly is where I initially

01:45:52 – 01:46:00:	had the realization of what we're describing today. The episode was with a woman who at the age of 16

01:46:00 – 01:46:07:	in 1973 got knocked up by her boyfriend. She hid it from her family, her Lutheran family, until

01:46:07 – 01:46:12:	she began showing one day her mother realized she was pregnant. Took her straight to the doctor.

01:46:12 – 01:46:16:	It was a family doctor who was also Lutheran. Don't remember if it was a Lutheran hospital,

01:46:16 – 01:46:24:	but pretty close. He was very gruff with her. He told the mother point blank, she can't keep it.

01:46:24 – 01:46:29:	They had 10 kids at home, and so he said, you're not going to be able to, you're going to be equipped

01:46:29 – 01:46:38:	to handle this child as well. She agreed, and so the 16-year-old girl didn't have any input.

01:46:38 – 01:46:44:	The decision was made to give the child up for adoption through Lutheran child and family services

01:46:44 – 01:46:53:	or the precursor to it. She received no prenatal care. She basically just went on with her life.

01:46:53 – 01:46:58:	She was not taken out of school. The law had been changed, so they weren't able to expel her either,

01:46:58 – 01:47:04:	so she attended school every day. Pregnant as a teenager, unwed. Her boyfriend skipped,

01:47:04 – 01:47:10:	he wanted nothing to do with it. She was on her own. She went into labor at school. She came home,

01:47:10 – 01:47:15:	told her mom she was having contractions. When dad got home, he drove her to the hospital,

01:47:15 – 01:47:19:	and she was basically on her own. The way she described the delivery was that they wheeled

01:47:19 – 01:47:27:	her in. They put up a curtain at her midsection. She wasn't able to see anything. She delivered

01:47:27 – 01:47:33:	the baby. She never even knew if it was a boy or a girl. She never got to hold it, never got to see

01:47:33 – 01:47:41:	it at all. She literally gave birth, and then the baby vanished. Then she went home. She recuperated,

01:47:41 – 01:47:46:	and she went back to school, and it was like it never happened. Part of the reason that she was

01:47:46 – 01:47:52:	telling the story was that she described how not long after she met the nice Lutheran boy and they

01:47:52 – 01:47:59:	got married and started a family and had a couple other kids. She never told anyone that she had

01:47:59 – 01:48:04:	had this child at 16. She did learn a few days after the birth that it was a boy, so she knew

01:48:04 – 01:48:10:	it was a boy, and that was it. She had been told that I believe that they would go. The child would

01:48:10 – 01:48:15:	be adopted by a Lutheran family. That was the extent of it, but she never knew anything beyond that.

01:48:16 – 01:48:23:	Fast forward to recent memory. She got on 23 in me because she had Crohn's disease when her

01:48:23 – 01:48:28:	daughters had Crohn's disease, which is a heritable disease. She was curious. She found her son,

01:48:29 – 01:48:35:	and so it connected them. She was shocked and terrified and didn't know what to do, but

01:48:36 – 01:48:40:	excited was the right word. It was like free fall. She didn't know what to feel,

01:48:41 – 01:48:48:	but she had described her life before that as being one of complete numbness. She described how

01:48:49 – 01:48:56:	when she gave birth to her children in her marriage, it didn't have the same type of joy that

01:48:58 – 01:49:05:	it would have had if not for her first child. Until she did the 23 in me, she never told her

01:49:05 – 01:49:11:	husband. She never told her family. Her and her parents were the only people who knew that she

01:49:11 – 01:49:18:	had ever been pregnant in her circle of friends. After she met her son, who at this point with

01:49:18 – 01:49:23:	I think 45 years old, he was an attorney, he had five kids of his own. He was successful and happy

01:49:23 – 01:49:30:	in Lutheran. It was a good reunion, but it was still very difficult for her. She talked to her

01:49:30 – 01:49:36:	husband and her kids, and everyone was happy about it. One of the points of the episode,

01:49:36 – 01:49:42:	as she recounted all these various facts, was her describing her own suffering and emptiness

01:49:43 – 01:49:48:	from having given birth to a child and then having the child vanish through adoption.

01:49:49 – 01:49:54:	She said that the child in whom she gave up her adoption forgave her. He understood why it had

01:49:54 – 01:49:59:	happened. He said he agreed with her it was the right thing to do under the circumstances.

01:50:00 – 01:50:05:	What struck me about hearing her describe the suffering and the numbness and the

01:50:06 – 01:50:13:	silent trauma of those events was that there was literally only one difference between her

01:50:13 – 01:50:19:	second pregnancy and her first. It was the same act of conception. It was the same gestational

01:50:19 – 01:50:26:	process. It was the same type of birth. The only difference was the moral circumstances

01:50:26 – 01:50:31:	surrounding with whom she had had sex. In the first case, it was a boyfriend in high school.

01:50:32 – 01:50:38:	That was wrong. That was disordered. That was not to whom she had been given. She gave herself

01:50:38 – 01:50:46:	away to someone inappropriately, sinfully. The result of that coupling was that her entire life

01:50:46 – 01:50:51:	has been scarred. That was one of the things that she talked about. She knew she was forgiven.

01:50:51 – 01:50:57:	Everyone in her family and her life forgave her. No one holds her morally culpable. And yet,

01:50:57 – 01:51:01:	to this day, even after having been reunited with him and all the rest,

01:51:01 – 01:51:07:	her entire life has been defined by the numbness of a pregnancy outside of marriage.

01:51:08 – 01:51:14:	To the point that it even had a small detriment on her bonding with her subsequent children.

01:51:15 – 01:51:19:	And what I realized as I was listening to that was how profound that is that if

01:51:19 – 01:51:25:	her first child had been with her husband, it would have been only joy. It would have been 100%

01:51:25 – 01:51:32:	joy. It was the single act of disobedience of having sex outside of marriage and the resulting

01:51:32 – 01:51:39:	pregnancy that set a chain of events in motion that were the temporal consequences of her sin.

01:51:39 – 01:51:45:	She's forgiven. She's confessed. I'm not holding in her against her morally. I'm not sitting in

01:51:45 – 01:51:50:	judgment. That's not the point. The point is that the suffering that she endured and continues to

01:51:50 – 01:51:54:	endure, she still has psychological problems from it. I would imagine this was a few years ago. She's

01:51:54 – 01:52:01:	probably doing better now that she's reconciled with her adopted son. But the fact remains that she

01:52:02 – 01:52:08:	lost out on most of her life as being the sort of life it would have been by that one single act.

01:52:08 – 01:52:13:	And that's the point of this whole episode. All it takes is one deviation from God's commandments

01:52:13 – 01:52:20:	to potentially wreck your entire life. This is sort of basic parental advice for anyone.

01:52:20 – 01:52:26:	You make one bad choice. It can ruin your life. The reason that we're discussing it,

01:52:26 – 01:52:32:	this is even true among Christians. It's even true with Jesus Christ and the forgiveness at the cross.

01:52:33 – 01:52:40:	Even when you sin and you are forgiven and you confess it, the sin may still harm you for the

01:52:40 – 01:52:47:	rest of your life. And the only way to fix that is never to do it. There is no undo button.

01:52:47 – 01:52:53:	There's no undo for her having slept with her boyfriend when she was 16. And she paid for the

01:52:53 – 01:52:59:	rest of her life for having done that, knowing that she was forgiven. And I think that's one of

01:52:59 – 01:53:05:	the important parts of this is that it's not psychologizing guilt and loss and separation

01:53:05 – 01:53:10:	anxiety and all these psychological terms we throw around. She was injured by her sin.

01:53:12 – 01:53:17:	What should have been the most joyous day of her life became the worst. And the worst day of her

01:53:17 – 01:53:22:	life became the defining moment of her life. Even though she went on to have a good and happy life,

01:53:22 – 01:53:28:	it wasn't as good and happy as if she had not done that. And so I would ask everyone who's

01:53:28 – 01:53:32:	listening to remember that that is the point of this. It is not about sitting in judgment

01:53:33 – 01:53:38:	retroactively and saying, well, you did this and you did that and we need to do more to you.

01:53:39 – 01:53:44:	The point is that the only way to prevent these temporal consequences for our sin

01:53:44 – 01:53:49:	is not to do them in the first place. In the best bet, if you're not going to simply believe

01:53:49 – 01:53:55:	God and obey him, there's backup. If you believe that God is active in this world, believe that

01:53:55 – 01:54:00:	there are temporal consequences for your sin. And even if you don't want to obey God for the

01:54:00 – 01:54:06:	sake of being a faithful creature, perhaps if the curb there is you will only obey him because

01:54:06 – 01:54:11:	you don't want the consequences, that's fine. You're still obeying God. In the future, God will

01:54:11 – 01:54:15:	hopefully strengthen and preserve your faith to the point that just obeying him for its own sake

01:54:15 – 01:54:22:	will be enough. But the only way to prevent any of this harm, any of this damage is not to do the

01:54:22 – 01:54:28:	sin in the first place. And we're in a generation that is so pervasively affected by this and so

01:54:28 – 01:54:35:	many other sins that people want to be defensive about their own past actions. Christians need to

01:54:35 – 01:54:41:	get past that and they need to get past it in part by not relying on the cross as a crutch.

01:54:41 – 01:54:47:	That's not what it's there for. We're comforted that we're forgiven, but we still need to be

01:54:47 – 01:54:54:	reminded that there's punishment for evil in this life. God built it that way. God did both of those

01:54:54 – 01:55:02:	things and the cross is the most important thing, but no less important in terms of shaping our

01:55:02 – 01:55:08:	lives can be, God's will is revealed to us in Scripture. And in some cases, things that are

01:55:08 – 01:55:15:	contrary to nature, it's revealed to nature itself. God has organized everything so that we have to go

01:55:15 – 01:55:20:	out of our way to make things worse. And one of the things we're trying to emphasize is,

01:55:20 – 01:55:29:	believe God, obey him, and you won't make things worse. To the contrary, if you do disobey God,

01:55:29 – 01:55:35:	if you do sin either willfully or accidentally and fall into these traps and these errors,

01:55:35 – 01:55:40:	you may well receive the due punishment in your flesh that will never go away.

01:55:41 – 01:55:47:	And civilizationally, and as a church, both the left hand and the right hand of Christ,

01:55:47 – 01:55:53:	we must acknowledge that there's punishment for sin. God paid for everything on the cross.

01:55:53 – 01:55:58:	The temporal punishments are only paid by those who have committed the sins. And in some cases,

01:55:58 – 01:56:02:	they're family and their friends and their neighborhoods and their communities. And in

01:56:02 – 01:56:08:	some cases, they're very civilizations. So this is a matter that affects all of us. It's not about

01:56:08 – 01:56:15:	secret sins. It's not about retribution. It's about making sure that we teach our children

01:56:15 – 01:56:19:	and we shape those who still have a chance not to go down these paths to tell them

01:56:19 – 01:56:25:	how bad it will get. And sometimes, how bad it will get is the best incentive to obey God.

01:56:25 – 01:56:30:	And later on, you realize what a blessing it is from God to have these things revealed

01:56:30 – 01:56:35:	and to have people in a senior position to warn you, don't go there. You will only make things

01:56:35 – 01:56:42:	worse for yourself in a way that will never go away until the resurrection. So if you listen

01:56:42 – 01:56:46:	with kids, or if you have kids, or if you're going to have kids, talk to them about this.

01:56:47 – 01:56:52:	This generation is a mess. The next generation doesn't have to be. That's with you. That's

01:56:52 – 01:56:57:	with the parents. If you have made these mistakes, if your kids are on the path of making these

01:56:57 – 01:57:03:	mistakes, think about these consequences for the rest of their lives. Think about the ways that

01:57:03 – 01:57:09:	you can help them avoid suffering and create an environment in your home and in your church

01:57:09 – 01:57:15:	and your community where we have these curbs around these behaviors so that they just don't

01:57:15 – 01:57:22:	happen. It used to be that profligate sexual behavior was thoroughly frowned upon. It was

01:57:22 – 01:57:29:	scorned. It was despised by society. We need to bring that back because when that's being maintained

01:57:29 – 01:57:34:	at the societal level, you don't need people to even believe in God. They just need to know

01:57:34 – 01:57:38:	that it's going to hurt if they disobey God. Whether or not they believe in him or not,

01:57:38 – 01:57:44:	just believing that if I cross the line with these things, I'm going to pay for it socially,

01:57:44 – 01:57:51:	that will keep people from sinning, from doing evil. That benefits everyone, most of all them.

01:57:52 – 01:57:59:	Again, to rein in someone's sinful nature through a curb that says if you act like a slut,

01:57:59 – 01:58:04:	you're going to be scorned and shamed publicly and you're going to have a terrible reputation,

01:58:05 – 01:58:11:	that should come back. The fact that that went away was a necessary precursor for everything else.

01:58:11 – 01:58:16:	This is not about finger pointing or recrimination. It's about preventing the evil from occurring in

01:58:16 – 01:58:21:	the first place because only by preventing the evil from occurring can we avoid the

01:58:21 – 01:58:28:	temporal consequences. Let's not have more reasons to nail Christ to the cross. As faithful

01:58:28 – 01:58:33:	Christians, that should be our chief concern. But as Christians living in this world,

01:58:33 – 01:58:38:	all of these things are equal concerns. We have to be faithful to God. We have to obey him because

01:58:38 – 01:58:43:	what choice do we have? He's told us these things for our benefit and the more we obey,

01:58:43 – 01:58:49:	the better things are. What's the downside? God has given us all these blessings. Let's

01:58:49 – 01:59:00:	receive them with thanksgiving and share them with others.